Chapter 3: The Bloodline Bureau
Chapter 3: The Bloodline Bureau
Lily stepped aside, letting Vanessa enter her tiny kitchen. The contrast between them was stark. Vanessa looked around the room, noting the leaking sink and the faded photographs of an orphanage on the counter. A deep wave of shame washed over the wealthy heiress.
"I brought this," Vanessa said, pulling a medical envelope from her coat. "I managed to get a sample of your hair from the ballroom floor last night—from when... from when I pushed you. I am so sorry for that, Lily. I was an insecure monster."
Lily sat down at her small wooden table. "Why are you here, Vanessa? Your mother made it very clear what your family thinks of me."
"Eleanor is terrified," Vanessa admitted, sitting across from her. "And that makes me suspicious. I bribed a private lab to run an express DNA panel using a brush I took from home and the sample from last night. They emailed me the digital results an hour ago."
Vanessa turned her phone around, sliding it across the table. Lily’s eyes scanned the medical jargon until they hit the bottom line: Probability of Maternal/Paternal Relationship: 99.9%. Full Siblings.
Tears immediately filled Lily’s eyes, splashing onto the digital screen. "It’s true... We really are sisters."
"But how?" Vanessa gripped Lily’s hands, her expensive manicured nails pressing against Lily’s rough, working-class skin. "Dad died thinking you were gone. Eleanor told everyone the fire took you. Why would she lie?"
"Because I’m not Eleanor’s daughter," Lily whispered, a memory suddenly unlocking deep in her mind. "I remember a different woman when I was very little. She smelled like lavender, not expensive French perfume. She used to sing to us."
Vanessa gasped, the pieces of her childhood finally clicking into place. "Our birth mother... Clara. She died when we were toddlers, and Dad married Eleanor a year later. Eleanor hated any mention of Clara. When the fire happened at the family's summer cottage, Eleanor was the one who volunteered to check the nursery. She came out crying, saying the smoke had gotten you."
"She didn't leave me to die," Lily realized, horror dawning on her face. "She gave me away. She paid someone to put me in an orphanage across the state line so she could secure the entire Beaumont estate for you, keeping her bloodline dominant and wiping my mother's memory completely out of the family."
"We have to expose her," Vanessa said, her eyes flashing with a righteous fury Lily had never seen in her before. "She stole fifteen years of our lives together. She made you live like this while I lived in a gilded cage built on a lie."
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Before they could plan further, Lily’s door was suddenly kicked open. Two of Eleanor's private security details stood in the doorway, flanked by a cold-faced lawyer.
"Miss Vanessa, your mother requests your immediate return," the lawyer said smoothly. "And as for you, Miss Lily... you are being sued for harassment, fraud, and corporate defamation. If you do not leave the city by midnight, we will ensure you spend the next ten years in a state penitentiary."
