All Chapters of THE SWITCHED HEIRESS : Chapter 51 - Chapter 57

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

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

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