Everyone in the Ashcroft family knew who I was.

The bastard.

The mistake my grandfather refused to acknowledge, the stain my uncles pretended didn’t exist, and the daughter my father only visited when no one was watching.

Every family gathering ended the same way. I sat at the smallest table, far from the heirs. My cousins wore diamonds passed down for generations while I wore clothes bought from discount stores. They believed blood determined worth.

They were wrong.

On the night of my grandfather’s 80th birthday, a citywide blackout plunged the mansion into darkness. While everyone panicked, I wandered through the old west wing searching for candles. Behind a dusty bookshelf, I accidentally triggered a hidden mechanism.

A secret room slowly opened.

Inside were shelves filled with ledgers, photographs, and dozens of locked boxes. One photograph froze me in place.

It wasn’t my father standing beside my mother.

It was my grandfather.

My hands trembled as I opened an old journal lying beneath the picture. Page after page revealed transactions, fake birth certificates, bribed judges, and disappearances disguised as accidents. But one sentence made my blood run cold.

“The child must never learn who her real father is.”

My heart stopped.

The dates matched my birthday.

I wasn’t just an illegitimate child.

I had been hidden because revealing my identity would destroy the entire Ashcroft dynasty.

Before I could read another page, footsteps echoed outside the room. Someone had discovered the open passage.

I grabbed the journal and slipped into the shadows just as the lights came back on.

From behind the door, I heard my grandfather’s voice—calm, but filled with terror for the first time in his life.

“Find her… before she reads the last chapter.”