Victor's memo smelled like acid—leaked paper that ate reputations. The board room swallowed silence as a lawyer droned about irregularities in the Liao lineage documents. Adrian watched every face, hunting betrayal like a man hunting for a missing tooth: unwilling to stop until the pain ended.
Renée locked the salon door after she found the envelope. Inside, the birth certificate was folded so many times the creases looked like a map. Mei sat on a chair half-covered with a robe, the sonogram on her lap like a small illuminated thing that had nothing to do with corporate wars.
"Either someone made this to destroy you, or someone made this to give you power," Renée said. Her voice was steady but quiet. "Neither is comfort."
Mei stared at the name printed in the certificate: a middle name she had never been called, and a surname that matched Adrian's in font and, shockingly, stamp.
Meanwhile, Adrian tore through the registrar's office and ordered identical searches, DNA archives, call records—anything that would tell him whether the paper was truth or simply a weapon. He found an old adoption note, half-obscured, signed with a name he hadn't seen on family correspondence for twenty years: Eleanor.
Eleanor's private eyes told him nothing; she answered him with the same controlled smile that had built empires and broken men. "A family archives clerk made a mistake," she said, and the tone of that phrase made Adrian want to know what else she could make look accidental.
Back in the coastal room, Mei folded the certificate and slipped it into the box with the sonogram. She felt suddenly very small beneath the weight of names. If she was Liao by blood, what then? If not, who had tried to make her look like one—and why?
That night the private investigator sent a photo. A woman—Mei, unmistakable—from a charity event five years prior, sitting beside a man holding the same signet ring Adrian now wore. The image had metadata that placed it at a country estate registered to Eleanor.
Mei's phone buzzed with three unread messages: one from Renée, one from the nurse, and a single cryptic text from an unknown number: We know where the first ledger is. Meet me at the pier at midnight.
Cliffhanger: Mei debates answering. She walks toward the pier with Renée watching; Adrian sees a different photo land on his table—Mei, pregnant, in a photograph that predates their marriage.