CHAPTER 5 — The Woman Who Burned the Truth
The ballroom exploded into chaos.
Reporters rushed toward Emily.
Camera flashes blinded her from every direction.
"Miss Carter! Are you really the Harrington heiress?"
"Did you know you were worth billions?"
"Where have you been for twenty years?"
Emily couldn't answer.
She didn't even know who she was anymore.
Richard Harrington stepped in front of her like a shield.
"Leave her alone."
His bodyguards immediately formed a circle around Emily.
But across the ballroom...
Evelyn Harrington remained strangely calm.
Too calm.
She slowly lifted her champagne glass.
"I suppose," she said with a smile, "we should all wait for the DNA results."
The guests nodded.
Of course.
A DNA test would solve everything.
But Evelyn wasn't worried.
Because twenty years earlier...
She had made sure there would never be any DNA to compare.
One hour later...
Richard personally escorted Emily into the west wing of Harrington Manor.
The mansion looked more like a palace than a home.
Portraits of generations of Harringtons lined the marble hallways.
Then Emily suddenly stopped walking.
Her heartbeat accelerated.
She had never been here before...
Yet somehow...
She knew exactly where the library was.
Without thinking, she turned left.
Then right.
Then climbed a hidden staircase.
Richard stared in disbelief.
"How do you know this house?"
Emily froze.
"I... I don't."
"But somehow..."
"It feels familiar."
Richard's eyes filled with tears.
Only members of the Harrington family knew about that hidden staircase.
Meanwhile...
In a locked room beneath the mansion...
Evelyn opened an old steel safe.
Inside sat a small wooden box.
She slowly removed a burned photograph.
Half of it had been destroyed by fire.
The remaining half showed a smiling little girl.
Emily.
Evelyn whispered coldly,
"You should have died with your mother."
She tossed the photo into the fireplace.
Within seconds...
The last known picture of the missing Harrington child turned to ash.
Or so she believed.
Because she didn't notice...
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Someone standing silently outside the door...
Watching everything.
