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“She had already planned it.”
I felt something cold move through my chest.
“Why eighteen months?”
He looked at Vanessa.
She didn’t answer.
Christian did.
“Because that’s when the agreement she had been studying changed.”
I looked toward my attorney.
She was already walking toward me.
“What agreement?”
Christian swallowed.
“Your mother’s trust.”
My entire body went still.
My mother had left everything to me.
Or so I believed.
Her trust had been created before Northstar Systems became successful.
I had never touched it.
Never needed it.
My attorney had always told me it was protected.
But now she was looking at me with an expression I had never seen before.
“Ethan,” she said quietly.
“What?”
“I need to check something.”
She opened her laptop.
The ballroom waited.
For several minutes, she said nothing.
Then her face changed.
“There is an amendment.”
My heart stopped.
“What amendment?”
“Your mother added a beneficiary.”
“Who?”
She looked at me.
“Your future spouse.”
Vanessa’s head snapped up.
I stared at her.
“You knew.”
She began crying.
“I didn’t know everything.”
“You knew enough.”
She shook her head.
“Christian told me.”
I looked at him.
“How did you know?”
He didn’t answer.
My attorney suddenly stood.
“Because he wasn’t just Vanessa’s boyfriend.”
She looked at the documents.
“He was one of the attorneys who reviewed the trust.”
My stomach dropped.
The perfect wedding.
The perfect fiancée.
The perfect life.
None of it had been real.
They had been studying my inheritance before I even proposed.
But then Lily tugged gently on my jacket.
I looked down.
She held out her stuffed rabbit.
“Mr. Ethan?”
“Yes?”
She whispered:
“There’s something inside.”
My blood went cold.
“What?”
She turned the rabbit around.
One of the seams had been cut open and sewn back together.
Maria rushed forward.
“I didn’t do that.”
I carefully opened the seam.
Something small fell into my palm.
A memory card.
I looked at Maria.
“What’s this?”
She was crying.
“I found it in Vanessa’s room two weeks ago.”
“Why didn’t you give it to me?”
“Because Vanessa saw me holding it.”
My attorney took the card.
“Let’s find out.”
She connected it to her laptop.
One folder appeared.
PROJECT ELISE.
I stared at the screen.
My mother’s name was inside.
Then another name.
Ethan Walker — Biological Records.
My heart stopped.
I looked at Maria.
“What does that mean?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
The attorney opened the first file.
It was an old photograph.
My mother.
A hospital.
A newborn baby.
And beside the photograph was a handwritten note.
I recognized my mother’s handwriting immediately.
Only six words were written across the bottom:
Ethan must never know who he is.
I couldn’t breathe.
The wedding guests had gone completely silent.
Vanessa was staring at the screen.
Christian looked like he wanted to run.
And little Lily, still holding her stuffed rabbit, looked up at me with frightened eyes.
I suddenly understood why she had run down the aisle.
She hadn’t come to stop my wedding because Vanessa was simply a bad person.
She had come because someone had finally discovered the secret my mother had buried for decades.
And whatever was on that memory card…
could change not only who I was marrying.
It could change who I was.