CHAPTER 2 — "The Billionaire Tried to Deny Everything... Until an Elderly Butler Revealed a Secret Buried for Twenty-Five Years."
Richard couldn't breathe.
His fingers trembled so violently that the old photograph nearly slipped from his hands.
Victoria snatched it away.
"What ridiculous nonsense is this?"
She looked at the image.
Her confident smile disappeared.
The young Richard looked unmistakable.
Standing beside him was a beautiful woman wearing a simple white dress, holding the same newborn baby.
On the back...
Richard recognized the handwriting immediately.
It belonged to Sarah Collins.
The only woman he had ever truly loved.
The woman who had disappeared without explanation twenty-five years earlier.
"No..."
he whispered.
"That's impossible."
Emily slowly reached into her worn handbag.
"I have more."
She placed an old silver necklace onto the table.
Richard's hands shook even harder.
He had bought that necklace himself.
The night he proposed to Sarah beside a quiet lake before his father ordered him to end the relationship forever.
Victoria looked from Richard to Emily.
Her expression darkened.
"You planned this."
"You're blackmailing my husband."
Emily's tears streamed freely.
"I don't want your money."
"I buried my mother three days ago."
"Her last words were..."
She could barely continue.
"Find your father... tell him I never stopped waiting."
Richard closed his eyes.
The memories crashed over him like a tidal wave.
Letters that suddenly stopped arriving.
Phone calls never returned.
His father insisting Sarah had abandoned him.
A rushed marriage arranged with Victoria to unite two powerful corporations.
Had it all been a lie?
Victoria grabbed Emily's arm again.
"Security!"
Before anyone could move...
An elderly voice interrupted.
"Don't touch the young lady."
Every head turned.
Walking slowly through the ballroom was Walter Hayes, eighty-two years old.
Richard's former family butler.
He had retired fifteen years earlier and almost never appeared in public.
Richard stared.
"Walter?"
The old man removed his white gloves.
"I've stayed silent for twenty-five years."
"I can't stay silent anymore."
Victoria suddenly looked terrified.
"Walter... don't."
But it was already too late.
Walter reached into his coat and carefully unfolded a yellowed envelope sealed decades ago.
"I was ordered to destroy these letters."
"I couldn't."
Richard recognized Sarah's handwriting before the envelope was even opened.
Hundreds.
Hundreds of unopened letters.
Every single one addressed to him.
Every one intercepted before reaching his hands.
Walter's voice broke.
"Your father paid people to make Sarah disappear."
"He believed she would ruin the Ashford name."
"And when she became pregnant..."
The ballroom held its breath.
"He paid someone to tell her you had chosen another woman."
Emily covered her mouth in horror.
Richard dropped to his knees.
Everything he believed for twenty-five years...
...had been a carefully engineered lie.
But Walter wasn't finished.
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"There is one more truth."
"The one that will destroy everything."
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