CHAPTER 5 — “The Daughter Who Never Knew Her Real Mother”
The confession struck the ballroom like lightning.
Nobody moved.
Nobody breathed.
Vanessa stared at her grandmother as if she had gone insane.
"...What did you just say?"
Eleanor's hands trembled uncontrollably.
"I never wanted anyone to find out."
Richard's face turned white.
"Say it again."
The old woman collapsed into a nearby chair.
"Vanessa... is Grace's daughter."
The crystal chandelier reflected in hundreds of stunned eyes.
Someone dropped a champagne glass.
It shattered across the marble floor.
Grace couldn't hear it.
The only sound in her ears was the pounding of her own heart.
"No..."
She whispered.
"No..."
Richard grabbed Eleanor's shoulders.
"Tell me everything!"
With tears streaming down her face, Eleanor finally confessed.
Twenty-one years earlier, Grace had gone into labor alone after believing Richard had abandoned her.
Complications nearly killed both mother and baby.
Grace lost consciousness after giving birth.
Seeing an opportunity to protect the Blackwood family's reputation—and to ensure the fortune would stay under her control—Eleanor bribed the hospital administrator.
Grace was told her newborn daughter had died.
But the baby was perfectly healthy.
Richard arrived at the hospital two days later.
By then...
Everything had already been arranged.
Eleanor handed him the baby.
She lied.
"This is an orphan whose parents died during childbirth."
Richard, broken by the belief that Grace had disappeared forever, accepted the child.
He named her...
Vanessa Blackwood.
The ballroom erupted into horrified whispers.
"My God..."
"She raised her own daughter to hate her real mother."
"That's monstrous."
Vanessa shook her head violently.
"No!"
"No, this is a lie!"
Grace looked at the young woman she had unknowingly served for months.
Every insult.
Every slap.
Every cruel order.
Had come from her own daughter.
Tears rolled silently down Grace's face.
"I carried you for nine months..."
Vanessa stepped backward.
"Don't call yourself my mother!"
"You can't!"
Grace's heart shattered.
She nodded slowly.
"I know."
"I lost that right the day they stole you from me."
Richard suddenly fell to his knees before Grace once again.
"I failed both of you."
Grace looked down at him.
"You didn't fail me."
"You believed the people you loved."
"But someone else..."
She slowly turned toward Eleanor.
"...made sure none of us would ever be a family."
Security quietly surrounded the elderly woman.
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For the first time in decades...
The woman who controlled the Blackwood empire looked terrified.
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