Chapter 4. Back

Lea’s POV

That was the way Jake and Phill met for the first time. There was no way for them to know that they were very intricately connected. In fact, their connection was biological.

Phill was Jake’s older brother, and Jake was one of his younger siblings. They had a little baby sister, who was at this time a full-fledged teenager. Her name was Mercy.

Well, you must be confused because I did tell you guys that Jake’s mother died in childbirth and his father was a drunk head. That was, in fact, what we knew. That was what we were told as neighbors. In fact, that was the lie that Jake lived with for most of his life.

The truth was that he was the middle child of the rich heiress Elizabeth Rodgers. She had taken in a very wimpy man for her husband because she loved bossing around.

She was a very rich and arrogant whore, if I were to be precise. She slept around with other men even after marrying the man of her own choice. No matter how wimpy a guy was, he did have some breaking points.

He lost it during his wife’s second pregnancy.

He knew she had been sleeping around with other men, and he thought that the child she was carrying this time around wasn’t his own blood.

What a presumptuous b*stard! I think Jake’s mom and dad definitely deserve each other. One was disloyal and arrogant, but the other was so cowardly that he was scheming against his own unborn son.

Mr. Cole, Jake’s biological dad, had everything planned.

He had arranged for a man with a pregnant wife who was willing to do anything for the sake of money. He made an arrangement with the guy. They got the man’s wife admitted to the same hospital on the day Jake was supposed to be delivered.

The nurses and the caretakers were paid in lump-sum amounts. All that they needed to do was deliver both babies together at the same time and then exchange them.

And that was exactly what they did. The only thing that went south in their plan was the fact that the pregnant woman died.

The father refused to take in the new-born child, but Mr. Cole insisted that everything went according to plan. He even paid the man double to take the child away and never show his face.

Jake’s fate could have been a lot worse than growing up with an abusive father figure. The drunken head could have thrown Jake away or, worse, killed him in his drunken state. It was a blessing from the heavens that Jake ended up being close to my aunt, who thought of him as her own child.

On the other hand, the boy who was now living the life that my Jake ought to have lived was named Percy.

He was very different from Phill and Mercy. Both externally and internally. He constantly lived the life of a compromised being, being ridiculed by his supposed father at every opportunity. His supposed mother wasn’t very empathetic either. He lived in that household as if he were an outsider. The only one who understood him was his younger sister, Mercy.

She was his only playmate, and she fought for his rights even when he himself flinched.

“Why are you always like this, Percy? Why do you let these maids bully you?” She would ask with tears in her eyes.

The maids knew that their mistress didn’t care much for her own children, so they found it amusing to tease them, Percy in particular, because he was very timid.

They had even locked him up once in the attic, knowing full well that he was claustrophobic.

It was Mercy who found him whimpering. She was hardly five years old at the moment, but she was thundering.

Her yells had brought in the entire family, and when she narrated what had happened, the maids were handed over to the police and severely penalized.

Over the years, the children had all grown beautifully.

Phill was becoming a doctor, working as an intern at their own family hospital.

Percy was a writer, and he spent most of his time alone in the hills.

Mercy was auditioning as a model with a few agencies, and she was all set for her grand entry in the industry.

We all know that Jake did not fail to make his own identity, despite the hardships that he had to face because of the misunderstandings between his own parents.

As for me, I was still studying. I was doing my master’s degree and working part time as the librarian in our local library.

I loved books. I could have been submerged in them the whole day and wouldn’t even notice. It was only Jake’s presence that brought me back to reality. He was my reason for living. I loved him, even though I didn’t know that I did. It was like a reflex.

This love was so strong inside me that it consumed my entire being. There was no possibility that I could imagine life if he was not in it.

In my dream, I saw something similar.

I was running behind a train. The train was just about to leave the station. I could see Jake at the door, leaning out, calling me, and extending his hand. I ran faster and faster. I could feel my heart beating rapidly. I was feeling hot. Very hot, in fact. It was getting difficult to breathe, and I knew I was struggling.

My hands and feet were slowly giving in as my palpitation intensified as I watched Jake leave.

I wanted to scream; I wanted to shout, but I couldn’t.

It was at this point that I felt those shocks, right over my breast.

Once, twice, and then the third time, I couldn’t bear it anymore, and I had to open my eyes.

“Thank goodness you are back, Lea. We thought we had lost you.”

Those were the words that greeted me as I came back to the world of the living. A very handsome face met my eyes with a warm smile. A face that resembled my Jake in more than one way, and so did his voice.