1. The Daughter Nobody Wanted

My name is Valeria Montoya Ferrer, and for many years I believed that love was something you earned through patience, silence, and obedience. I thought that if I tried hard enough — if I didn't cause trouble, if I accepted every slight with my head bowed — someday my parents would look at me the way they looked at my sister. It never happened. I understood that late, but I understood it.

In the Montoya family, I was the eldest daughter. The one who came first and got in the way after. When Camila was born, everything changed. My parents stopped seeing me as a daughter and started seeing me as a mistake they could no longer correct. Every bad thing that happened in the house ended up being my fault. If Camila cried, I had upset her. If she got sick, I hadn't been careful enough. If she made a mistake, I paid the price.

My brothers caught on quickly. Sebastian, the eldest of the boys, decided I wasn't worth his time. Lucas treated me as if I didn't exist. And Adrian, the youngest, simply looked at me with irritation, as if my presence alone ruined the family's harmony. Camila, on the other hand, was perfect. They protected her, justified her, adored her. I just watched from the corner — the right corner, the one that didn't get in the way.

I grew up knowing my place was at the back. That my voice didn't matter. That my life would always be worth less than hers. Even so, I never hated Camila. The fault wasn't hers. The real problem was a family capable of sacrificing one daughter to save another, without a single moment of remorse.

The night everything broke apart, my parents called me into the study. I remember my father's grave tone, my mother's rigid expression, and that feeling in my chest warning me that something was about to go wrong. They told me the police needed help. That there was a killer on the loose and Camila was in danger. They talked about responsibility, family duty, and how much I could "do for them."

They didn't tell me the truth. They never did.

I agreed because I always agreed. Because some stupid part of me still hoped that if I did the right thing, they would finally see me as a daughter and not as a convenient replacement. I didn't know I was signing my own death sentence until it was too late.

And that was the last lesson I learned as Valeria Montoya Ferrer.

The man was laughing.

There was no hurry in him, no guilt. His laugh was quiet, almost bored — as if what he was about to do was part of some old, worn-out routine. My eyes were covered, but I didn't need to see to understand what was coming. The first cut arrived without warning. Then another. I felt my body tense, felt the pain spread out of control, felt my screams dissolve into nothing. No one was going to hear me. No one was going to save me.

I thought of my family. Not with bitterness, but with a cruel kind of clarity. They knew. They had always known. I wasn't a daughter to them — I was a temporary solution. A disposable life.

The last pain was cold. A clean cut across my throat. The air stopped coming and the world went dark all at once. There was no light, no happy memories, no eternal promises. Just silence.

And then… I woke up.

I thought I was in heaven, or somewhere like it. I expected a white ceiling — something ethereal, something peaceful. But the first thing I felt was the burning in my throat. Intense, real, unbearable. I blinked twice, disoriented, until a figure appeared in front of me. A nurse. Her eyes flew open as if she'd seen a ghost, and without a single word she ran out of the room.

Fear moved through my body.

Had I not died?

Seconds later a doctor came in, followed by several others. Six — I counted six silhouettes around the bed. The doctor began examining me quickly, asking questions I couldn't answer, scribbling notes while nodding with an expression of disbelief. All I could think was: I could feel my neck. I could feel my body. I could feel the terror.

Something didn't add up.

When he finished, a woman came toward me. Her face was streaked with tears — not tears of guilt or delayed relief, but tears of pure joy. She took my hand carefully, as if she were afraid of breaking me, and stroked my cheek with a tenderness I had never known before.

"Isabella…" she whispered, her voice breaking. "My girl."

That wasn't my name.

And yet, something in my chest cracked when I heard it. The urge to cry hit me all at once — violent, uncontrollable. Not from the pain, not from the fear, but from the certainty that cut through me like a truth too real to ignore.

I had died.

And yet… I was alive.

The life that had been torn from me without justice was giving me a second chance. I didn't understand how or why, but I felt it with absolute clarity.

As I looked at them more carefully, something began to fall into place in an unsettling way. Those faces weren't entirely unfamiliar to me. The woman with the elegant gaze and commanding presence, the man beside her with his composed, serious bearing, and the four men surrounding them — they all looked like they'd been pulled from the pages of those magazines that talk about power, money, and surnames you can't ignore. Families that appear on covers, not in crime reports.

They, however, were looking at me as if I were the only thing that mattered in the room.

The woman hadn't let go of my hand. The man — her husband, he must have been — watched my every move with quiet but intense attention. The four men took turns moving closer: asking if anything hurt, if I could see clearly, if I felt dizzy. One adjusted my pillow. Another checked my IV line. A third frowned as if the entire world were to blame for my condition.

I smiled without meaning to.

It was excessive. Too much.

And yet… it was strange how comforting it felt.

The doctor cleared his throat and explained that I might experience mild memory loss due to the time I'd spent unconscious. The moment he finished the sentence, everyone reacted at once, as if an invisible alarm had been triggered. That was when they decided to introduce themselves — one by one, with a patience no one had ever shown me before.

"I'm Elena Valcour," said the woman, stroking my hair. "Your mother."

"Gabriel Valcour," the man added. "Your father."

My chest tightened without warning.

Then came the others.

Alexander — the eldest. Serious, protective, with eyes that seemed to analyze everything.

Matteo — more relaxed, with an easy smile and watchful eyes.

Dante — intense, quiet, studying me as if he needed to confirm I was real.

And Thiago — the youngest, the one who positioned himself closest to me, as if afraid I might disappear again.

"We're your brothers," Alexander said firmly. "And we're not going to let anything happen to you."

Valcour.

That surname resonated in my mind with a different kind of weight. It didn't take me long to piece it together. This family wasn't just powerful — they were one of the wealthiest and most influential in the country. Business dynasties, heirs, untouchables. And I… I was the daughter who'd had an accident. The daughter who had been in a coma. The daughter everyone had been waiting for.

I swallowed, feeling the burning in my throat again — but this time it wasn't only physical. Something inside me was breaking and rebuilding itself at the same time. In one life, I had been disposable. In this one, I was the center of everything.

I closed my eyes for a moment and breathed carefully.

I didn't know why I had woken up here.

I didn't know what this Isabella Valcour had done before her accident. But I knew one thing with absolute certainty.

If fate had placed me in the role of the protected daughter…

then my old family would never see what was coming for them.

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