Chapter 2 Every Application Ends Up on My Desk

Colton only burst into tears once we got into the car. He buried his face against Megan's chest, his slight shoulders trembling with every sob. "Mommy, did I bring the wrong present?"

Megan's tears fell upon hearing his words. "No, sweetheart. You didn't do anything wrong."

I sat in the driver's seat, gripping the steering wheel so tightly that my knuckles turned white.

Rosalie sat in the backseat. The red mark on her face had yet to fade. She kept her head lowered, looking as though all the strength had been drained from her.

As we drove away from the old residence, the neon lights outside the windows blurred together.

Then, I heard my mother whisper, "Ian, I'm sorry."

I glanced at her through the rearview mirror. "Mom, you have nothing to apologize for."

"If only I'd taken better care of you back then…" Her voice trailed off.

I knew what she was referring to.

The Jacoby family and another family had given birth at the same private hospital 28 years ago.

Later, the hospital discovered that the babies had been switched at birth. Ivan, the boy the Jacoby family had raised, wasn't their biological son. Instead, I was the one who carried the Jacoby bloodline. Unfortunately, I had also grown up in a small town in the south.

The truth finally came to light three years ago.

Rosalie had nearly fallen apart when she found out. She went to the countryside herself to find me, crying and apologizing over and over. She begged me to come home, telling me she owed me 25 years of motherly love.

And so I went with her.

…

However, Walter had never once treated me with kindness, starting from the very first day I stepped through the Jacoby family's doors. If anything, he looked down on my adoptive parents, and he scorned me just as much.

It was no surprise that he favored Ivan above all else.

I had endured it all this while because Rosalie had been caught in the middle of it all, and I knew how much she was suffering.

Megan was my adoptive mother's niece. We'd grown up together as childhood sweethearts. She had helped me keep my identity a secret as she accompanied me back to the Jacoby family, enduring their cold stares and colder snubs right alongside me.

"You wanted to wait until we had enough evidence," she'd told me. "So, I'll wait with you."

But today, they laid their hands on Colton.

My adoptive parents, Charles Gavell and Elaine Walsh, had warned me long ago, saying sternly, "You can return to that family if you want, but don't ever lower yourself until you're crawling in the dirt for their acknowledgement. You're not alone in this world. You have people standing behind you."

Those weren't just comforting words to tide me over.

G&W Agricultural Group was an empire Charles and Elaine had built with their own two hands. Their company had stakes across ecological farms and cold-chain logistics to overseas ranches, food processing, industrial investment funds, and cultural tourism projects. Even though G&W had grown steadily over the years, the founders kept a remarkably low profile.

The outside world was only aware that a rather discreet married couple stood behind G&W. Very few people knew that I'd started working for the group at 22 and was now in charge of its Bluewater region operations.

Now, I was done waiting.

…

When we got home, Megan rushed to apply an ice pack to Colton's face. He was exhausted from all the crying, so he had fallen asleep in her arms with his hands wrapped around her neck. Still, his sleep was far from restful as he continued to hiccup between quiet sobs.

I stood at the doorway of his bedroom, my chest aching at the pitiful sight.

Megan carefully laid him down and tiptoed out. When she looked at me, her voice was hoarse. "Ian, I don't want Colton seeing the Jacobys anymore."

"You have my word. Never again," I vowed.

"I'll never forget the way your father hit him today, not for the rest of my life."

I reached out and pulled her into my arms. "Neither will I."

Rosalie sat on the living room sofa, silent.

I poured her a glass of warm water and handed it to her. She looked up at me, her eyes red-rimmed. "Ian, your father wasn't always like this."

I sat down across from her and said firmly, "Mom, he's always been like this. You just didn't want to see it."

She froze.

She parted her lips to argue, but she had nothing to say in his defense. That was because she knew that deep down, Walter's favoritism wasn't a recent development.

It was hard not to notice his bias when he'd given me a meaningless position at the company but refused to let me anywhere near its core operations the year I'd returned to the Jacoby family. He claimed he was worried I didn't understand the workings of a large company and would embarrass the family.

And it only happened because of one comment from Ivan.

He had said, "Ian's only just returned. He needs time to adjust."

That was enough for Walter to hand Ivan the reins to every position of real authority in the company.

In the second year that marked my return to the family, Jacoby Realty ran into a cash crunch. I introduced several contacts in the cultural tourism industry, hoping to help tide them over during their financial crisis. However, Walter didn't even bother to look at the information.

"What kind of projects can your country bumpkin friends possibly negotiate?" he'd scoffed in disdain.

Another year had passed, making this my third year with them. This year also marked the year Jacoby Realty had begun aggressively seeking a partnership with G&W to develop an agricultural and cultural tourism destination.

Unfortunately for them, they had no idea that every application they submitted would eventually land on my desk.