Nobody moved.

The billionaire stepped closer, still staring at the girl as if he were looking at someone he had lost years ago.

“What was your mother’s name?” he asked.

The girl’s lips trembled.

“Adeline.”

A glass slipped from someone’s hand in the crowd.

Because Adeline had once been the billionaire’s first wife.

The woman everyone thought had died in a yacht accident eighteen years earlier.

The rich woman suddenly snapped, “She’s lying!”

But the billionaire slowly opened his hand and showed the earring.

“It belongs to the same set,” he said. “I buried the other earring with Adeline myself.”

A murmur of horror spread through the room.

The girl pushed herself up slightly and said, “My mother wasn’t dead. She hid me for years. Before she died, she gave me the necklace and said when the truth came out, they would know whose blood I carry.”

The guests turned toward the rich woman in shock.

Because she was not just any guest.

She was the billionaire’s second wife.

The woman who took control of the estate after Adeline disappeared.

The woman who had raised everyone to believe there was no other heir.

Then the billionaire looked at the terrified girl on the marble floor, at the necklace shaking in her hands, and finally at the woman in black.

And in front of the entire hall, he said the words that destroyed her:

“You didn’t protect this family.

You stole it from my daughter.”