Chapter 2: The Golden Seals of Betrayal
"What nonsense are you babbling about?" Eleanor hissed, her voice dropping into a desperate whisper as she tried to contain the damage. "My husband, Arthur Belmont, had one son. Ethan is the sole heir to the Belmont legacy! Guards, remove this hysterical woman from the property immediately!"
"Nobody touches her," Ethan commanded, his voice shaking but firm. He looked at Clara, his heart pounding against his ribs. "Clara... what is that envelope?"
Clara broke the golden wax seal with a crisp, definitive snap that resonated through the silent hallway. She pulled out a stack of certified legal documents, complete with the official stamp of the New York State Supreme Court and a notarized DNA profile from the FBI’s forensic database.
"Twenty-six years ago, before Arthur Belmont married you to secure the merging of your family's banking assets, he had a secret marriage in Virginia," Clara revealed, her eyes locked onto Eleanor’s trembling pupils. "A marriage to a young woman named Sarah Vance. She gave birth to his firstborn son. A son whose existence you discovered, paid to hide, and legally wiped from the public registries after Arthur’s tragic drowning."
The crowd erupted into a frenzy of murmurs. The press photographers at the end of the hall began frantically clicking their cameras, the flashes illuminating Eleanor’s pale, horrified expression.
"You're lying! Sarah Vance was a grifter! She died in a car accident!" Eleanor shrieked, losing her high-society composure entirely.
"She died of brokenness and poverty because you blocked her from every legal recourse using your family’s crooked attorneys," Clara countered, stepping over the shattered glass toward the matriarch. "But her son survived. He was adopted by a good family. And when he grew up, he became a federal investigator. He spent the last five years tracing the blood money you used to silence his mother."
Clara turned the document around, displaying a photograph attached to the DNA profile.
Ethan gasped, stumbling backward. The face in the photograph didn't belong to a stranger. It belonged to Liam Vance—the chief operating officer of Belmont Shipping, the brilliant young executive Ethan had personally hired and trusted as his right-hand man for the last three years.
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"Liam..." Ethan whispered, his mind spinning. "Liam is my brother?"
"Your older brother," Clara corrected sharply. "The true, firstborn heir to fifty-one percent of the Belmont voting shares. And the father of the child I am currently carrying."
