Lahat ng Kabanata ng Mr. Hayes’ Secret Heir: Kabanata 111 - Kabanata 120

Lying in bed that night with Mason, I told him how everything had gone with Mr. Jeff. He said he already knew the test would come back positive."With the striking resemblance to Aurora, and the features you share with your father, the eyes, hair color, even ears. Those are your parents, Mia."I smiled. "I take it Lior isn't the only one who notices things.""Definitely not."He pulled me closer. "How do you feel, knowing your whole life might have been a lie?"I thought about it."Strangely… relieved.""Relieved?""I could tell he wants me as his daughter, Mason. That kind of excitement cannot be faked. All my life I thought I was unwanted. It feels good to find out that was never true. Gina and her husband not being my real parents is a relief, because it makes it easier to heal from everything they did to me."I took a deep breath. "My only fear is my mother. It would break me if she had given me up because she never wanted me.""I doubt that is the case," Mason said. "The woman in

After we both managed to pull ourselves together, we went to visit my mother's grave.The cemetery was quiet when we arrived. As we walked between the rows of headstones, I noticed flowers on most of the graves. Some fresh, others already beginning to wilt.My mother's grave was the only one without any.It didn't look like anyone had visited her in a long time. I wasn't surprised.How could Gina do everything she'd done to me and still summon the courage to come here?We stopped in front of the headstone, and I stared at my mother's name. Seeing it there made everything sink in deeper.She was really dead.I had just found her, only to lose her.My father broke down for the second time. This was worse than the tears he'd shed in the car. He crouched beside the grave and cried so hard that I had to kneel beside him, rubbing his back.This time, I didn't cry with him. I comforted him instead.There was something different about his grief now. He had spent years searching for her, proba

When we arrived in France, I was surprised by the house.It was tucked into a quiet, middle-class neighborhood and wasn't particularly huge. Compared to Dad's house in Chicago, it was almost modest, definitely not the kind of place I imagined a man like him buying.He caught the question on my face before I even asked it, laughed, and explained."Your mother made us buy it. She was tired of the big houses and all the…" He paused, chuckling. "What did she call it? The bling-bling.""She said she couldn't change who I was, but France was supposed to be where she could escape from my world." His smile softened. "She loved it here."Walking through the front door, I understood why he had kept the house.It felt like she still lived there.There were traces of my mother everywhere. Her clothes were still in the closet. Her jewelry, shoes, and other belongings remained exactly where she had left them. Even the walls looked like they hadn't been repainted since she was here.It was almost as

The rest of the celebration passed in a blur of laughter, teasing and conversations coming from every direction. At some point, there was so much going on that I gave up trying to keep track of who was saying what and simply enjoyed the moment, watching Lior happily move from lap to lap.I was sitting beside Mason, still occasionally looking down at my ring like it might disappear if I didn't keep checking, when he brought up an engagement party.My father jumped in with his own plan. He wanted to formally introduce me as his daughter.Somehow, those two things became one huge engagement-slash-reveal party, and I was perfectly fine with that.My father had missed years of being my father. If standing in front of a room full of people and proudly announcing that I was his daughter made him happy, I wasn't going to take that away from him.The problem started when they moved on to the wedding.It started with possible dates and quickly spiraled into planners, designers and venues.I sat

I had it in mind to see Nicholas, mostly to wrap things up cleanly before diving fully into wedding preparations. Mason had already spoken to his mother, and once the wedding was behind us, school would take over most of my time. I also wanted to invite Nicholas before everything got too hectic and I somehow forgot.He was happy for me when I told him, congratulated me warmly, admitted he would miss working with me, and wished me nothing but the best.As I turned to leave, something got into me. Curiosity, maybe, or Daphne's words still sitting in the back of my mind. I turned back around.“Nicholas, are you in love with me?”The question caught him off guard. “Where is that coming from?”“Daphne. She seemed pretty certain you were.” I hesitated. “I didn't think much of it before, but now that I've invited you to the wedding... if she's right and being there is going to be difficult for you, I don't think I'd want to put you through that.”He was quiet for a moment before releasing a