Chapter 2 - The Midnight Interrogation
Two burly security guards flanked Elena as she was escorted not to the kitchen, but to Arthur Sterling’s private study on the third floor. The room smelled of old money—leather, scotch, and expensive cigar smoke.
Arthur paced in front of a massive fireplace, his face purple with rage. Sebastian stood casually by the bar, pouring himself a drink, completely unfazed by the nuclear bomb he had just dropped on his family’s legacy.
"You are insane, Sebastian!" Arthur roared. "She is a scullery maid! A grifter! The real Evangeline died twenty years ago in the Hamptons estate fire!"
"Did she?" Sebastian took a sip of amber liquid, his eyes never leaving Elena. "Or did her nanny, Maria, smuggle her out before the roof collapsed? The same Maria who just happens to be the 'adoptive mother' listed on this girl's employment file?"
Elena’s heart stopped. Maria. Her mother. The woman who had raised her in a cramped two-bedroom apartment, always terrified of the dark, always terrified of rich people. Maria had passed away six months ago from leukemia, taking her secrets to the grave.
"My mother was a good woman," Elena snapped, her voice trembling but defiant. "I don't know what you're talking about. I'm just here to wash dishes."
Arthur sneered, walking over and tossing a thick checkbook onto his mahogany desk. "Listen to me, you little rat. I don't care who you are. I am in the middle of a massive corporate merger. I will not have my stock tank because of a ghost story." He scribbled furiously. "Five million dollars. You take it, you leave the country tonight, and you never speak of this."
Elena looked at the check. Five million. It was more money than she could fathom.
But as she reached for it, she remembered the medical bills. She remembered how Maria had begged the Sterling Foundation for a grant for her cancer treatments, only to be coldly denied by Arthur’s board.
Elena pulled her hand back. "No."
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Arthur froze. "Excuse me?"
"I said no," Elena stood taller, the terrified maid vanishing, replaced by a sudden, fierce pride. "I want a DNA test. And if I am Evangeline Sterling... I want everything that belongs to me."
