Married to the wrong twin, loved by the other のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 31 - チャプター 34

The flight back to New York was tense and silent.Julian spent most of it staring at the birth certificate, his thumb tracing the ink of his own name. He didn't speak, and I didn't push. Some realizations needed to settle in the bones before they could be spoken aloud.I watched the clouds drift past the jet window and tried to wrap my mind around the magnitude of what we had just learned. Adrian had built his entire empire on a lie. He had spent his life tormenting Julian, trying to destroy him, all because he knew that Julian was the true firstborn. Richard Blackwood's will stated that the eldest son inherited the controlling shares. If the truth came out, Adrian's entire claim to power would be void."He knew," Julian finally said, his voice hollow. He didn't look at me, his eyes fixed on the distant horizon. "All those years. The drowning. The sabotage. The way he looked at me like I was a disease. It wasn't just because I was the 'spare.' It was because I was the real threat."I

Victoria’s investigation took four days.On the fifth day, she drove up to the Hudson Valley estate with a thick folder and dark circles under her eyes. She refused coffee, refused food, and simply spread the documents across the kitchen table.“I found the proxy,” she said. “It took me a while because the account was buried under a labyrinth of shell companies. But the money trail leads to one person.”She slid a photograph across the table.It was a woman in her mid-fifties, impeccably dressed, with sharp cheekbones and cold, calculating eyes.Julian picked up the photograph, his brow furrowing. “That’s Diane Sterling. She was my father’s executive assistant before Natalia. She retired twenty years ago.”“She didn’t retire,” Victoria corrected. “She was paid a massive settlement to disappear. She knows everything about the Blackwood family’s dirty secrets, including Project Nightfall. And she’s been managing Adrian’s offshore accounts for the last decade.”My stomach dropped. “So sh