All I could do was allow the tears to flow after Aldrich spoke—or should I say, after he explained how he bought me.

So all I was at that particular moment was all because of him. He offered me a scholarship under a hidden identity. And all those times he spoke like he had known me from somewhere—this was it. He met my father and got to know everything about me. He paid off the money that that old fool, who apparently happened to be his best friend back then, had given my mother for my marriage. He went ahead and stretched his generosity further by giving my so-called mother...