This Time, I'll Be the Villain's Favorite Daughter novel Chapter 127

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This Time Be the Villain’s Favorite Daughter

Chapter 127 The Shape of Envy

“… It was about your biological father.”

+5 Pearls

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?”

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Chapter 127 The Shape of Envy

Every instinet told her this mattered.

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

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

+5 Pearls

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.

୮

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.

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Chapter 127 The Shape of Envy

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

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.

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