Chapter 3 - The Mother’s Vengeance
By midnight, the girls were tucked safely into the massive, silk-sheeted beds of the east wing, exhausted and fast asleep.
Grace sat in a velvet armchair by the window, staring out at the dark expanse of the lawn. The door clicked open softly, and Nathan stepped into the room, holding a steaming mug of tea. He placed it quietly on the side table before pulling up a small wooden stool and sitting down a few feet away from her, keeping a respectful, cautious distance.
"You haven't touched your tea," Nathan said softly.
"I don't want your tea, Nathan," Grace replied without looking at him. "I want to know how your mother played her part in this."
Nathan flinched, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees, burying his face in his hands for a long moment before looking up.
"My mother never wanted us to marry, Grace. You know that," Nathan said, his voice tight. "When you got pregnant, she saw it as a threat to the family trust. She claimed you were a fortune hunter. When you had the emergency complications, she and Evelyn took control of the hospital administrative interface. They told me you were bleeding out, that the babies couldn't be saved. And when you woke up, they told you the babies had died and that I had abandoned you with a payoff."
"And you believed them?" Grace turned her head sharply, her brown eyes flashing with sudden, incandescent fury. "You didn't check the birth registry? You didn't demand medical records? You just accepted that your wife and children vanished into thin air because it was convenient for your mother’s stock portfolio?"
"I was broken, Grace!" Nathan shouted in a harsh whisper, standing up and pacing across the Persian rug. "My mother showed me forged death certificates bearing the county coroner's stamp! She had my signature forged on a financial settlement release! I was working eighteen-hour days trying to keep the firm afloat after the market crash, and they lied to me with the precision of a military operation!"
"Well, your mother’s operation failed," Grace said coldly, standing up to face him. "Because I survived. And I raised my daughters without a single dime of your blood money. We lived in a cramped two-bedroom apartment above a bakery in Chicago. I scrubbed floors, I baked bread at four in the morning, and I taught my girls how to smile when we didn't have enough money for groceries. And every single night, I told them their father was a good man who would have loved them if he could."
Nathan recoiled as if he had been slapped. The words cut deeper than any knife. He looked at Grace—not as the fragile, intimidated twenty-year-old girl he had married, but as a queen who had built an empire out of ashes while he sat in a golden cage of lies.
"Where is your mother now?" Grace asked, her voice dropping to a dangerous whisper.
"She's in Florida," Nathan said, his jaw clenching. "At the Palm Beach estate. Celebrating her retirement from the board."
Grace walked past him toward the door. "Book a jet for tomorrow morning. We're going to Florida."
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Nathan turned, surprised. "Grace, what are you—?"
"Your mother lied to destroy my family," Grace said, pausing at the threshold with a look in her eyes that made the billionaire CEO of Sterling Financial Group swallow hard. "Now it's time for her to meet her granddaughters."
