Villain’s Favorite 127

 

Chapter 127 The Shape of Envy 

“… It was about your biological father.” 

She let the words settle, watching her daughter’s face with careful attention. Maya had gone still. Her head bowed, her expression distant, unreadable. Wendy pressed forward before she could lose her nerve. “His name is Thomas Jackson. 

She paused, then circled toward the harder truth. “He also has a son. Lawrence Jackson.” 

Maya didn’t look up. Only her fingers curled slightly, tightening against themselves. 

“You two are twins,” Wendy said softly. “A brother and sister, born together.” 

Maya’s lips twitched, almost forming a smile. 

She should have looked stunned. Or happy. Or overwhelmed in the way a child might be upon suddenly learning where she came from. 

But she couldn’t summon the appropriate emotions. 

The performance just wouldn’t come. 

Even now, years later, remembering the Jacksons felt like a bad dream she’d never fully woken from. 

“Mom.” Maya reached up and caught a strand of her own hair, winding it around her finger and gripping tight, a small anchor in open water. “I knew. 

“Everything you just said. I already knew.” 

Under Wendy’s stunned gaze, Maya slowly lowered her eyes further. 

Up until now, she had always seemed like any other child. 

It was only in this moment, with her gaze shadowed and her expression drained of warmth, that Wendy saw it. That resemblance. For a fleeting second, Maya looked eerily like Lawrence. 

“You knew?” Wendy’s voice came out thin, stripped of its usual composure. 

Her first instinct was rejection. That’s impossible. 

Maya never left her sight, whether it’s school, home, or the rare outings in between. 

How could she have known? How could she have traced those threads back to their source? When did she… 

The questions rose in a rush, but Wendy forced them down. Maya clearly had more to say. Wendy took a steadying breath, smoothing her tone. 

“Maya, I don’t know what you’ve been through. I don’t know how you found out about any of this. 

“Are you… willing to share with me?” 

Every instinct told her this mattered. 

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Chapter 127 The Shape of Envy 

Finished 

More than mattered. This was the thing that lived underneath Maya’s skin. 

Maya raised her head. Her throat worked once, twice. 

Wendy reached out and pulled her gently into an embrace, her hand moving in slow, steady strokes along her back. 

Wendy thought of conversations with Raymond from years ago. Warnings. 

Maya would be trouble. 

Not unmanageable, not for them, but still complicated. 

There would be things in her past that didn’t fit neatly into the life they had built. 

“Mom,” she said, keeping her voice light, almost playful, “there’s a secret. About me. A real one. Can I tell you and Dad together? When he’s home?” 

She didn’t want to be cryptic. She hated the way secrets sat between people. But if she was going to open this door, she wanted to do it fully, lay everything bare in front of the people who mattered. 

Whether they believed her. 

Whether there’d be consequences. 

She couldn’t predict any of it. 

But if she had to say it, she would come clean completely. 

To the people she cared about. 

“Of course,” Wendy said without missing a beat. “Sweetheart, whatever you want to say. Whenever you’re ready. I’ll be right there.” 

Maya needed a door to open. 

Wendy could be that door. She could sit in silence and hold space. She had plenty of practice. 

Raymond could talk for hours about conspiracies and contingency plans, weaving theories so intricate they made her head spin. 

She always listened. She never interrupted. 

Mostly because she never understood half of it. 

“I don’t want to go back to the Jacksons. I don’t want to find any parents. My mom is already gone. I only have a sibling, Lawrence,” Maya said softly, leaning into her mother’s arms. Her fingers tightened again. “And I hated him.” 

In orphanages, no one talked about kindness like it was a virtue. 

The directors tried their best, but between the children, there was always a quiet war. 

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Chapter 127 The Shape of Envy 

Arguments over food. Fights over the warmest blankets and the best clothing. 

Maya had been fierce enough to hold her own. In that environment, it had served her well. 

The turning point came the year she was taken back to the Jacksons. 

She still remembered stepping into a house so large she couldn’t see from one end to the other. 

Chandeliers blazed overhead like captive suns, each crystal throwing light in a thousand directions. Furniture she had no names for. 

Carpets so clean that every step felt like trespassing. 

For any child, the reaction would have been the same. A shrinking, instinctive sense of smallness. 

While she had been fighting over scraps, someone else had been born into this, a life of effortless abundance. A sprawling estate. Beautiful clothes. Attentive staff. 

Two children lived in that house. A girl and a boy. The girl floated through the hallways like a princess, bright and carefree. 

The boy was just as polished, shielded from every sharp edge the world had to offer. 

Maya looked at them and felt only one thing. 

Ugly, burning envy. 

In the beginning, there had been nothing warm or familial between her and Lawrence. 

She could feel it radiating off him sometimes, that quiet resentment. 

Why had she appeared so suddenly, tearing through the careful architecture of his life? 

Why hadn’t she come earlier? 

He knew, on some intellectual level, that none of it was her fault. 

Their mother had told him again and again. “She’s your sister. The most important person in the world to you.” But children don’t love by logic. 

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This Time III Be the Villam’s Favorite Daughter