Chapter 2: The Truth Hidden for Eighteen Years
Chapter 2: The Truth Hidden for Eighteen Years
The investigation began the next morning.
Arthur ordered his legal team, private investigators, and security division to uncover everything.
Within days, the truth emerged.
It was worse than anyone imagined.
Victoria had never intended to kill the baby.
That would have created too many questions.
Instead, she arranged for Emily's newborn daughter to disappear.
The child was placed with a struggling family hundreds of miles away.
Records were altered.
Birth certificates changed.
Money exchanged hands.
Then Emily died believing her father had abandoned her.
Arthur sat alone in his study when he learned that fact.
For nearly an hour, nobody entered the room.
Nobody dared.
Because everyone could hear him crying.
Grace struggled with the revelations.
One week earlier she had been cleaning hotel rooms.
Now reporters waited outside gates hoping for photographs.
Lawyers called her "Miss Beaumont."
People who ignored her suddenly wanted her attention.
She hated it.
One evening Arthur found her sitting in the garden.
"You look unhappy."
Grace laughed softly.
"I don't know who I am anymore."
Arthur sat beside her.
For a moment neither spoke.
Then he handed her an old photograph.
Emily at seventeen.
Laughing.
Holding a puppy.
Wearing jeans.
Looking wonderfully ordinary.
"Your mother hated formal parties," Arthur said.
Grace smiled.
"Really?"
"She once escaped a charity gala through a kitchen window."
Grace laughed.
The same laugh Emily used to have.
May you like
Arthur's eyes filled with tears.
For the first time in eighteen years, he felt as though a piece of his daughter had come home.
