Chapter 2: The Truth Buried for Fifteen Years
Chapter 2: The Truth Buried for Fifteen Years
The next morning, Josiah summoned Paloma to his private office above the bar.
She arrived nervous and exhausted.
The room overlooked Manhattan.
Rain streaked across the glass.
Josiah stood beside a table covered with documents.
“Sit.”
She obeyed cautiously.
“What is this?”
“A question,” he replied.
“Why does the Ashworth family hate you?”
Paloma stared at the papers.
“I don’t know.”
That was the truth.
She had spent her entire life being told she was a mistake.
An embarrassment.
A burden.
Josiah slid a file toward her.
“Then let's start with what they hid.”
Inside were birth records.
Hospital reports.
Financial documents.
DNA results.
Paloma frowned.
The color drained from her face.
“No.”
Josiah said nothing.
Her hands began shaking.
“This can’t be real.”
But it was.
Fifteen years earlier, a woman named Sofia Reyes had worked as a housekeeper for the Ashworth family.
She died shortly after giving birth.
The family claimed the child belonged to an unknown man.
That child was Paloma.
The documents revealed something very different.
Bryce’s father, Charles Ashworth, was her biological father.
Paloma wasn’t a servant’s daughter.
She was an Ashworth heir.
A legitimate heir.
Worth hundreds of millions.
The room spun around her.
“All these years…”
Josiah nodded.
“They knew.”
Tears filled her eyes.
Not because of the money.
Because of the betrayal.
Every insult.
Every humiliation.
Every cruel joke.
They had known exactly who she was.
And they had spent fifteen years convincing her she was nothing.
Because if she ever discovered the truth, the Ashworth empire would be divided.
The inheritance would change.
Control would shift.
May you like
Bryce had not hated her because she was worthless.
He hated her because she mattered.
