The Swapped Heir

For fifteen years, I poured every ounce of my being into raising my "brother" Billy-Joe, sacrificing my own dreams and college education to get him to his NFL draft party. He was my whole purpose after our parents supposedly died. At Billy-Joe' s draft party, the festive air turned noxious. I saw them: Earl and Sue-Ellen, my "dead" parents, alive and too prosperous, doting on a jeweled stranger named Tiffany. My blood ran cold when they confessed the brutal truth: I was a mere "swap," used to raise their biological son, while their true daughter Tiffany lived in luxury as the Governor's child. Fifteen years of my life, my sacrifices, were just a "business decision." "She was useful," Sue-Ellen hissed, "Now you're a loose end." Before I could process their betrayal, pain exploded, and darkness claimed me. I woke up gasping, not in the afterlife, but in my old trailer bed. It was the day of their fake funeral. My body was intact, yet I had been brutally murdered. How could they fake their deaths, then try to kill me for their monstrous secret, leaving the world to pity them? This wasn't grief; it was a cold, sharp fury. This was no nightmare. This was a second chance. And I knew, with chilling clarity, every single payback I was going to exact. They thought they had disposed of me? They were about to pay.