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หน้าหลัก / Romance / THE SWITCHED HEIRESS / FIFTY ONE

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FIFTY ONE

ผู้เขียน: Phyana Hale
last update ปรับปรุงล่าสุด: 2025-11-13 23:58:14

Charles worked in silence.

He didn’t call Hazel that night. Didn’t text. Didn’t risk her name in a single message. He knew what she’d found, the nurse, the name Tessa Castell, and he also knew she was holding it all in. That’s what Hazel did when she was scared. She folded pain into silence until it became strategy.

So he handled the next step alone.

He called in an old favor from Milan. A private investigator he trusted. Someone who didn’t ask questions about why a mafia-linked businessman was suddenly interested in a London hospital from twenty-six years ago.

The request was simple.

“St. Adelaide’s Medical Center. July 22, 1999. I need every staff name on duty that night. Nurses, doctors, janitors. All of them.”

The investigator hesitated. “Birth records?”

Charles’s tone went flat. “Staff records.”

He paid triple the rate. No trail.

Hazel stayed quiet for three days. She worked as usual, attended meetings, smiled for cameras, managed Castell Industries like nothing had changed. But
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  • THE SWITCHED HEIRESS    FIFTY SEVEN

    Hazel sat at the long dining table with her laptop open, sleeves pushed to her elbows. Charles placed a thick folder beside her and dropped into the chair across from her. The room was quiet, the kind of quiet that made everything feel sharper.“Ready?” he asked.She nodded. She’d been ready since the moment she found the photograph. Since the moment she saw that single word on the back. Backup.Her face still felt tight from the anger she’d swallowed all morning.Charles spread out the papers and receipts he’d printed. Offshore records. Banking trails. Names that had appeared too many times in the shadows of Castell’s history.Hazel stared at them like she was staring at pieces of a puzzle that refused to fit until someone forced them to.“Okay,” she said quietly. “Let’s start.”Charles pulled a marker and walked around the table to the wall where he’d taped a blank sheet of paper the size of a window. He gave her the marker cap. She slid it into her pocket without thinking.“Valenti

  • THE SWITCHED HEIRESS    FIFTY SIX

    Hazel shut herself in her bedroom the moment she got home. She locked the door quietly, turned off the lights, and leaned against the wall until the floor stopped swaying under her feet.The envelope she’d taken from Dimitri’s safe felt heavier than anything she’d ever held.Tessa’s photo from when she was four was already in her blazer pocket. But there had been another envelope she didn’t look at yet, thin, yellowed, left beneath the contracts like it had been waiting for her.Hazel sat on the edge of the bed and opened it.A single photograph slid out.This one hurt more.The picture was grainy and old. A newborn baby lay in a hospital bassinet, wrapped in a pale blanket. Light brown hair. Tiny fingers curled near her cheek. A plastic wristband around her ankle.And beside the bassinet, leaning in close, was Valentina.Valentina wasn’t smiling. She looked tense. Focused. Like she wasn’t admiring a newborn but checking a document.Hazel swallowed hard, her throat tight.She flipped

  • THE SWITCHED HEIRESS    FIFTY FIVE

    Hazel entered Dimitri’s study with a file in her hand and a steady heartbeat she didn’t feel. The charity event was in two days, and she used it as a shield. No one questioned her if she was “organizing.” No one questioned the perfect wife.The room smelled like cigars and old leather. Dimitri’s world. His ego lived on the walls, degrees, photos, a frame of him shaking hands with a politician he always praised.Hazel closed the door quietly.She’d walked in here dozens of times. Always with him watching. Today, she was alone. And she needed that.She placed the charity file on his desk and opened it for show. Papers spread, names, invoices. Enough noise on the surface to look harmless if someone walked in.Beneath that, her focus slid to the drawers.Charles had told her two nights ago, “There has to be something he’s hiding. People like him always keep proof of their own lies.”Hazel didn’t want to believe Dimitri kept anything real in this room, but every discovery so far proved her

  • THE SWITCHED HEIRESS    FIFTY FOUR

    Three weeks into the investigation, Hazel had learned something strange about herself: she was getting good at living two lives at once.By day, she handled Castell Industries meetings, sat across from Dimitri at dinners where neither of them spoke more than necessary, and pretended nothing in her world was cracking.By night, she pieced together the truth about her own birth like someone stitching wounds shut with shaking hands.Charles had been the only constant in that second life. Quiet. Steady. Dangerous in a protective way that let her breathe.Tonight, he was the reason she was sitting alone in her study with only a desk lamp on, waiting for the files he promised.The moment her phone buzzed, she grabbed it.Charles: The investigator found something. I’m sending it. You should sit down.Her stomach tightened. She was already sitting, but she lowered herself further into the chair anyway. She didn’t know why. Instinct, maybe. Charles never warned her unless the hit would land ha

  • THE SWITCHED HEIRESS    FIFTY THREE

    Hazel didn’t sleep.Charles’s last message stayed in her mind like a bruise she couldn’t stop pressing.Someone was poisoning Edwin.Someone in the house.Someone close.By sunrise, she already knew her next step.The birth files mentioned one name.The nurse who filed the first note.The woman who wrote switched.Hazel showered, dressed in something simple, tied her hair back, and left before anyone woke up. Emilia texted asking if she needed the morning schedule reviewed. Hazel replied once: Later.She drove across town with her hands tight on the wheel.Charles had sent her the nurse’s address at 3 A.M.Hazel didn’t ask how he found it. She didn’t need to.The building was old, narrow, and quiet. Retired people sat outside on chairs, watching the street like they had nowhere else to be. Hazel walked past them and rang apartment 3B.She waited.Nothing.She rang again.A lock clicked. Slowly. Carefully.An older woman peeked through the chain. Deep eyes. Gray hair pulled back. A nur

  • THE SWITCHED HEIRESS    FIFTY TWO

    It started with a spreadsheet.Hazel had opened Edwin’s medical folder only to confirm a date for his next board meeting. That was the plan. A simple check. But she noticed something wrong the moment she saw the timeline of lab results.Too many tests.Too close together.Too similar in purpose.She stared at the screen, brows tight. Blood panels, liver enzymes, kidney evaluations, metals, more metals, vitamin levels, immune markers. Some of them repeated only days apart. Some weren’t even standard for a man of his age unless there was a reason.There shouldn’t be a reason.Hazel leaned back slowly, eyes fixed on the pattern. Edwin had always been strong, stubborn, sharp. Even in his sixties he moved with purpose, spoke with force, lived as if time respected him. But the past year… he’d been tired more often. Forgetful at moments. Pale sometimes. He said it was stress.Hazel believed him at the time. Everyone did.But the records didn’t lie.She pulled the files into a folder, printed

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