The person who had taken my daughter, the person who had paid Tessa millions to orchestrate the entire framing of Maren so they could steal a child from a desperate, ruined woman…
It was my own mother.
Evelyn Bellamy.
My mother, who had openly despised Maren for her middle-class background. My mother, who had constantly pressured us for an heir. My mother, who lived just three miles away in a gated estate.
Before I could even process the sheer magnitude of this betrayal, the overhead lights in the study violently clicked on.
I whirled around, dropping the papers onto the desk.
Standing in the doorway was Tessa. She was wearing a crimson robe, a cold, mocking smirk plastered across her face. But it wasn’t just her.
Standing right beside her were two large, imposing men in dark suits—men I recognized as her father’s private security detail. And in Tessa’s right hand, pointed directly at my chest, was a sleek, black semi-automatic pistol.
“You really should have just stayed blind, Rowan,” Tessa said, her voice dripping with venomous amusement as she stepped into the room. “You had a beautiful life mapped out for you. A beautiful wife, a booming company. But you just couldn’t let that trash on the side of the road go, could you?”
“You’re a monster,” I hissed, stepping back against the desk, my mind desperately searching for an exit. “You and my mother. You stole my daughter.”
“Stole? No, darling. We saved her from being raised by a peasant,” Tessa laughed, a chilling, psychotic sound. “Your mother wanted a legacy. I wanted your fortune. It was a perfect business transaction. But now… you’ve ruined the merger.”
She raised the gun, aligning the sight directly between my eyes. One of the security men stepped forward, pulling a heavy silencer from his pocket and screwing it onto the barrel of the weapon.
“What are you going to do, Tessa? Kill me in my own home? You’ll never get away with it,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, though my knees felt like water.
“Oh, it’s quite simple, really,” Tessa smiled, her eyes completely vacant of any human warmth. “The grief of your past divorce, the stress of the upcoming wedding… it all became too much. A tragic, self-inflicted gunshot wound. The police will find your suicide note on the laptop. I’ll inherit the estate, your mother keeps the girl, and Maren… well, Maren will just remain a broken nobody living in the woods.”
She took a step closer, her finger tightening on the trigger.
“Goodbye, Rowan.”
Click.
