Chapter 7 - The Twelve-Year MasterpieceI sat down slowly, the cold concrete chill seeping through my shoes. "Daphne, you're scaring me. What truth?"
Daphne reached into her bag and pulled out a worn, yellowed leather notebook. She slid it across the table toward me.
I recognized it immediately. It was her grandmother's diary—the same grandmother whose gold necklace she had allegedly sold twelve years ago to buy our first inventory of medical supplies.
"Do you remember the story I told you when we met in university?" Daphne asked, her voice calm and melodic. "I told you I was an orphan, raised by a poor grandmother who left me nothing but a gold necklace."
"Yes," I whispered. "You sacrificed that necklace so I could start the business."
"My grandmother wasn't poor, Ethan," Daphne said, her lips twisting into a faint, bitter smile. "My grandmother was Helena Sterling. The co-founder of Sterling Medical—the company your father bankrupt and stole three decades ago."
The air left my lungs as if I had been punched in the chest. "What... what did you say?"
"Thirty years ago, your father, Arthur Vance, betrayed my family," Daphne said, her eyes flashing with a cold, ancient fire. "He forged documents, drove my grandfather to suicide, and left my grandmother penniless in a small apartment while your family lived in luxury. Your father died before my grandmother could ever get justice. But she taught me one thing before she died: Revenge is a dish best served over a lifetime."
My mind exploded into a thousand pieces. Twelve years of marriage. Twelve years of shared struggle, shared dreams, shared tears...
"You... you targeted me?" I stammered, my voice breaking. "Our entire relationship... our marriage... it was all a calculation?"
"At first? Yes," Daphne admitted, looking down at her pregnant belly. "I orchestrated our meeting at the university library. I spent months studying your habits, your psychology, your weaknesses. I knew you had a deep-seated desperate desire to prove yourself to your abusive mother and worthless brother. I became the perfect, supportive, obedient woman you needed to build your empire."
"And the company?" I choked out, tears welling in my eyes. "Aegis?"
"Aegis wasn't built on your genius, Ethan," she said coldly. "Every major contract, every breakthrough client, every regulatory approval we got over the last decade was secretly arranged by me behind the scenes, using my grandmother’s old network. I built Aegis using your name as a front."
"Why?" I screamed, slamming my fist onto the table. "If you wanted to destroy me, why wait twelve years?! Why get pregnant with my child?!"
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Daphne looked at me, and for the first time, a flicker of genuine emotion—pain, confusion, and grief—cracked through her icy facade.
"Because I made a mistake, Ethan," she whispered, a single tear slipping down her cheek. "I fell in love with you."
