1 The day they found out I wasn’t the real heir, my wife filed for divorce. The real heir became her second husband. Five years later, I saw them again. They were having dinner with my child at the bistro where I worked. As they were leaving, Eleanor slipped a card across the table to me. “Frank,” she said, her voice low, “stop working here. You’re embarrassing our daughter.” The little girl beside her piped up. “And don’t go around telling people you’re my dad.” I gave them my best waiter’s smile. “Ma’am, if you’re ready to pay, you can do so at the counter.” Then I turned to the child, who was staring at me with pure disdain. “I don’t have a daughter. Who are you?” Eleanor’s hand shot out, grabbing my arm. “Are you still blaming me? For not saving your birth mother back then?” I said nothing. What was the point? Without the Ashworth name, I wasn’t even worthy of being her husband. What right did I have to demand anything? … I didn’t have time for this. I joined my coworkers, clearing the remnants of their meal from the table. I could feel their eyes boring into my back, but I didn’t turn around. When my shift ended at ten, my manager pulled me aside. He told me the restaurant had a new owner: Eleanor Hawthorne. He looked at me, his expression pained. “Frank, she wants me to let you go. But don’t worry, she’s giving you six months’ severance.” As I stepped outside, Eleanor emerged from the shadows beside her car. She walked toward me, sighing softly. “Frank, I’m just looking out for you. This work is grueling, and you’re here so late.” “Find a more respectable job,” she urged. “There’s no such thing as a job without dignity,” I replied flatly. “And for the ‘respectable’ ones you’re talking about? You need credentials.” She froze for a second, her lips pressed into a thin line. She’d forgotten, hadn’t she? She was the one who said I’d stolen twenty-three years of Ethan’s life. That my education belonged to the Ashworths, and I had no right to it. Once my name was stripped away, I was just a man with knowledge but no degree to prove it. The car window slid down, and the little girl’s head popped out. “Mommy, let’s go. Why are you talking to this old man?” she whined. “Daddy will get jealous if you keep talking to other men. Let’s go home.” Ethan, from inside the car, offered a token reprimand. “Tilly, don’t be rude. Frank is only twenty-eight, that’s not old. Your dad is twenty-eight, too. Are you saying I’m old?” Tilly immediately grabbed Ethan’s arm, her voice turning syrupy sweet. “Of course not, Daddy! You’re way more handsome than Chris Hemsworth!” She glanced back at me. “Look at him, he’s all sallow and pale. He probably can’t even make ends meet.” Ethan tweaked her cheek playfully. “My little girl has such a sweet tongue. You’ll get ice cream when we get home.” He then looked at me, his face a mask of apology. “Frank, I’m so sorry about that. Please don’t take it to heart.” “Seriously, though,” he continued, “if you can’t find a good job, you could come work at the estate as Tilly’s private chef. At least you wouldn’t have to deal with customers or work these insane hours. I didn’t even recognize you earlier. If I had, I would’ve insisted you sit down with us. Could have saved you a couple of hours on your feet.” Eleanor shot him a sharp look. “Ethan, that’s enough.” He mumbled, just loud enough for me to hear. “I was just worried you’d give him a hard time again. I’m not even mad that he stole my identity as the heir, but you just can’t let it go. Promise me you won’t bother him anymore.” Just as he was about to close the window, I jammed my hand in the opening. The glass bit into my skin, but I ignored the searing pain. Eleanor was instantly on alert, her hand clamping down on my shoulder. Her grip was as strong as ever, enough to take down a grown man. “Frank, what do you think you’re doing?” I ignored her, my eyes locked on Ethan, my voice pleading. “It was a fire at the hospital. The babies were swapped by mistake. No one stole anything from anyone. Can you please stop saying that? People who don’t know the whole story are still tearing your adoptive mother apart online.” “She’s so sick, Ethan. She really wants to see you, to apologize for messing up your life.” In truth, the life that was messed up was my biological mother’s—Ethan’s adoptive mother. After I found her, the neighbors told me the story. She’d rushed into that fire to save her son, and her face was badly burned. Her husband left her. She lost her job as a television host. She worked three jobs just to raise Ethan. But Ethan dropped out of school at sixteen to run with a rough crowd, wasting his nights in bars. Every time she got paid, he’d snatch the money to party with his friends. Right before the Ashworths came for him, my mother found out his friends were threatening to expose him—for bar fights, for three stints in juvie, for catching a nasty disease. She was terrified it would ruin his chance. So she gave them the two hundred thousand dollars she had saved for her own medical treatments, just to buy their silence. But as soon as the story of the switched heirs broke, everyone turned on her. Because she’d once been a minor celebrity, they accused her of orchestrating the whole thing. For five years, she was dragged through the mud online. Now she was so ill she couldn’t even get out of bed. All she wanted was to see Ethan one last time. From inside the car, Ethan just shook his head. “I’m not seeing that crazy woman.” 2 His refusal wasn't a surprise. I had tried. It seemed my mother was destined to die with that final regret. I tried to pull my hand back, but the window was still clamped shut, my flesh throbbing and swollen. Seeing the angry red marks, Eleanor turned to the man in the car. “Ethan, open the window.” Only then did the glass retract. I snatched my trembling hand away. Ethan’s face was a picture of guilt. “Frank, I’m so sorry. Why would you stick your hand in there?” Eleanor reached for my hand, wanting to inspect the injury. I pulled away instinctively. There was a time when she was the perfect wife. She used to trim my nails, and if she accidentally clipped the skin, she’d look up at me with those wounded eyes and whisper she was sorry. My friends would laugh at me. “You got it made, man. Married the boss lady and now you can’t stop showing it off.” Then Ethan showed up. A DNA test confirmed it: he was the true Ashworth heir, and I was the fake. Eleanor had promised me then, “You may not be an Ashworth, but you’re still my husband. You’re still our child’s father.” Because of her, the Ashworths let me stay, grooming Ethan to take his place. Until the day I found them in bed together. In our bed. “Frank,” Eleanor had said, her voice hollow. “I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault.” Ethan smirked at me from our marriage bed, a look of pure triumph on his face. The next second, he was on his knees, prostrating himself before me. “Brother, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have fallen for Eleanor, but I can’t help it. I love her.” I knew he was faking it. It was all a calculated move to destroy my marriage so the Ashworths would finally cast me out. I flew at him in a rage, tearing at his clothes, striking his face. How could he use someone as good as Eleanor? I had already told the Ashworths I wanted nothing from them, that their fortune was his. I had given everything back. Why did he still have to take her from me? I even broke the promise I’d made to my own mother, the one to keep Ethan’s disease a secret. I told Eleanor everything. But she didn’t believe me. She slapped me across the face. “You’re vile,” she spat. “You stole his life for twenty-three years, and now you slander him?” I was stunned. I couldn’t believe any woman would be so indifferent to something like that. “Frank,” she’d said, her voice cold as ice, “even if he is using me, I’m glad I can be used. I’m glad if it means he gets back everything that you stole from him.” When she said those words, I knew. This woman didn’t love me anymore. And I didn’t want her. All I wanted was my daughter. Eleanor had scoffed. “Are you trying to use our child to control me? To keep a connection? Frank, I will not let my daughter be raised by someone with your background.” I lost the custody battle. Without Eleanor, the Ashworths kicked me out for good. That day, my real mother, wearing a thin hospital gown under a bulky winter coat, was waiting for me outside the courthouse. Not long after, her health took a nosedive. She needed money for surgery. I went to the Ashworths, to the home I had lived in for twenty-three years. I knelt at their gate for six hours. No one came out. I had no choice but to go to Eleanor. She told me she would never help the woman who had tormented the man she loved. In the end, I turned to loan sharks and high-interest online lenders. Now, I’m drowning in over a hundred thousand dollars of debt. They say for an ordinary person with no assets, a number like that is a life sentence. If I still had my credentials, the kind of "respectable" job Eleanor talked about, the money wouldn't have been such an issue. But the pay from my current job was a drop in the ocean. My phone rang, shattering the tense silence between the three of us. I answered it, and a panicked nurse’s voice crackled through the speaker. “Frank? It’s your mother. She’s crashing. We’ve moved her to the ICU. You need to get here now.” A sense of dread washed over me. I put the phone on speaker. Eleanor immediately wrenched open the passenger door. “Get in, Frank. I’ll drive you.” It was late and catching a cab would be impossible. I swallowed my pride and got in. From the back seat, Ethan’s voice trembled. “Eleanor… I’m scared that woman will hit me again.” Hearing that, a raw, protective anger surged through me. I whipped my head around to glare at him. “If she hadn’t knocked some sense into you back then, you’d have been sold for parts by those thugs you ran with! You think you’d be married to the biggest CEO in Port Crest?” 3 Ethan looked wounded, tugging on Eleanor’s sleeve. “Eleanor, just let me out here. I’ll take Tilly and give you two some space. Whether you believe me about those thugs… that’s up to you.” I saw him in the rearview mirror, holding Tilly, giving the child a subtle look. Tilly didn’t move, her eyes darting between him and her mother. Eleanor’s gaze met mine, and her face was etched with disappointment. “Frank, what isn’t yours will never be yours. You can’t get it back by tearing someone else down.” Seeing that her mother wasn’t rushing to Ethan’s defense, Tilly grabbed the heavy, steel toy car beside her and hurled it at my shoulder. “You’re a bad man!” she shrieked. “Stop saying mean things about my daddy! Stop yelling at him! I’ll hit you! Get out of our car!” A sharp, radiating pain shot through me, but the ache in my chest was worse. I thought the daily barrage of calls from debt collectors had numbed me to all feeling, but this… this still hurt. When this child was born, I was the one who cared for her day and night. Through the jaundice, through a bout of pneumonia, I never left her side. I used to hold her in my arms for hours, kissing her soft cheeks, my perfect child, the symbol of my love for the woman I adored. Eleanor slammed on the brakes. She snatched the toy car from the backseat, rolled down the window, and with perfect aim, tossed it into a nearby trash can. I said nothing, staring out the window. My own tear-streaked face was reflected in the glass, and my mother’s words echoed in my mind. “Frank, my baby, I’m so sorry. I let you wander into a palace by mistake. I let you taste riches only to be plunged back into poverty, to have you counting pennies for a cup of coffee… I was so stupid. I couldn’t even recognize my own son. I brought someone else’s child home, and I couldn’t even raise him right.” Once, crushed by the weight of my debts, I had screamed at her. “Yes! Your biggest mistake was running into that fire! You ruined yourself to save a man who abandoned you, a man who stole your real son’s wife and daughter!” She had sobbed, collapsing to her knees, her mind clouded, repeating “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” over and over. In the end, I held her and wept with her. I knew it wasn’t her fault. It could never be her fault that my wife and daughter didn’t want me anymore. We reached the hospital. “She keeps calling for her son,” the doctor told us. “‘My son, I’m so sorry.’ Maybe seeing a familiar face will help stabilize her.” I didn’t know which son she was calling for, but I grabbed Ethan and dragged him toward the room. No matter what, that poor woman had saved him from a fire and raised him for twenty-three years. The least he could do was see her one last time. On the bed, a frail, skeletal woman saw Ethan and her hand began to tremble as she reached for him. He hesitated for a moment, then took her hand in his. I stepped out, leaving them alone. Eleanor stood nearby, holding Tilly’s hand. She watched me for a long moment before speaking. “I paid a hundred thousand towards your mother’s hospital bill at the front desk.” I was stunned. Five years ago, I knelt before her for hours, and all she said was, “I will not help anyone who hurt Ethan.” Now I had no money to repay her, and she knew it. “What’s the condition?” I asked. “I can’t pay you back. You should go get a refund while you still can.” Her eyelashes fluttered. “You don’t have to pay me back. It’s my fault you can’t use your degree. If you could have, you would have made that much money easily in the last five years.” I let out a bitter laugh. So, it was guilt. I looked right at her. “For five years, every job I’ve had, I’ve been fired within two months. They always said the Hawthorne family told them to. Eleanor, are you finally letting me off the hook?” Her face went pale. “I never…” Suddenly, Ethan burst from the room, shouting, “Frank, it’s bad! Your mother… she’s not going to make it!” I rushed inside. The woman on the bed, nothing but skin and bones, saw me and reached out a trembling hand. Tears streamed from her eyes as she spoke, her words broken and ragged. “My silly boy… why… why did you lie to me all this time? You said you owned a restaurant…” “You… for me… you took out loans… a hundred thousand dollars… How will you live? How are you going to live now?” “I’m just destroying my children by being alive… I’d be better off dead…” After she spoke those words, the machines beside her bed began to shriek, a frantic, piercing alarm. Then, the line on the heart monitor went flat. Just like that, she was gone. The doctors tried for two hours, but they couldn’t bring her back. I didn’t understand. I had hidden the loans from her. How could she have known? My eyes found Ethan, standing in the distance, a picture of profound grief. Did Ethan tell her? Did he know about my debts? I didn’t know. But I knew my mother knew too many of his secrets. She had every reason to want him silenced. I walked over to him, my gaze boring into his. “Was it you? Did you say something to provoke her?” 4 Eleanor immediately stepped in front of Ethan, shielding him. “Frank, don’t be ridiculous!” I suddenly remembered seeing one of Ethan’s old cronies at the hospital a few days ago, a bleach-blond thug. He’d sneered at me. “Your mom’s a real idiot, you know that? She’s sitting on a murder weapon against that Ashworth kid and she’s not using it to get some medical money? And you, you’re even dumber. Letting some diseased punk steal your woman. Hell, he gave it to me, too.” I was stunned. Ethan was with men, too? Was it possible? Did Ethan blurt out the news of my debts to shock my mother into a fatal heart attack, to silence her for good? Eleanor’s voice was cold, laced with disappointment and pain. “Frank, you were once an Ashworth, raised in a respected family. When did you learn to stoop to blackmail and baseless accusations? Ethan didn’t even want to come. He came, your mother died, and now you blame him?” Ethan just shook his head. “Eleanor, don’t blame him. It’s hard to go from riches to rags. She told me… she begged me to take care of Frank. She was afraid he’d do something illegal to pay back the hundred thousand he borrowed to maintain his old lifestyle. I think the shock of it just… got to her.” He turned to Eleanor, his face earnest. “Eleanor, can we help him?” She looked at me with contempt. “I can’t believe what you’ve become. I was right not to give you the child.” Ethan then made a suggestion. “Eleanor, we need a house manager anyway. We’d pay someone else fifteen thousand a month, why not give the job to Frank? He can use the salary to pay off his debts. If he’s living with us at the estate, the collectors won’t be able to get to him, and he can get back on his feet. It takes time to adjust after losing everything. I was poor for twenty-three years. I can teach him how to live within his means, how not to let money destroy him.” Eleanor looked at Ethan, a soft smile gracing her lips. “You’re too kind. He accuses you of the most horrible things, and still, you want to help him.” Ethan managed a small, sad smile. “No matter what, she raised me. I can’t ignore her dying wish.” I ignored his saintly act. I had to prepare my mother’s body. She had been a TV host; she always cared about her appearance. Ethan followed me into the room and closed the door. I glanced at him. “Eleanor’s not here now, Ethan. You can drop the act. Why do you want me at your house? You’re not that charitable.”
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