Then came the truth none of us had expected.
“No, Shiaoza.”
He stopped.
Eleanor looked first at Jang, then him.
“You never had a birthright.”
No one moved.
“Lian is my only biological child.”
The room seemed to lose air.
After losing Lian to family pressure at nineteen, Eleanor had been unable to have another child. Years later, she and her husband privately adopted a baby.
Shiaoza.
They loved him, raised him, and gave him their name.
But the old trust he had attempted to manipulate contained a biological-heir provision he believed protected him.
It did not.
He had hidden his half-sister because her existence destroyed the inheritance claim he intended to use.
That was why he never told Eleanor he had found her.
That was why he kept Jang nearby.
That was why companies had been placed in her name.
She was not simply a convenient scapegoat.
She was the only person whose identity could prove he had no automatic claim at all.
Shiaoza sank into his chair.
For the first time in ten years, my husband seemed to have no strategy left.
Only panic.
The doors opened again.
Two federal investigators entered with building security.
Shiaoza turned toward me.
“You called them?”
I shook my head.
Jang wiped her cheeks.
“I did.”
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