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Chapter 01 - Title: The Inheritance of Blood

Chapter 01 - The Sealed Letter

Nathan took a slow, heavy step forward into the kitchen. The air inside felt ice-cold, suffocating, and thick with the heavy scent of copper and fresh paint.

Victoria stood near the marble island, her eyes wide with frantic, manic panic as her gaze darted between the heavy wooden hockey stick lying on the floor and Nathan’s stony, unreadable face.

“Nathan... please! You have to listen to me!” Victoria shrieked, her voice pitched high with fake terror. “She’s crazy! She broke into the private study upstairs! I caught her stealing your family’s financial ledgers! I was only trying to defend our home!”

Nathan ignored her completely. He dropped to his knees on the cold tile beside Grace, his large hands trembling as he gently touched her bruised shoulder. Grace let out a sharp gasp of pain, but she didn't pull away. She kept one arm firmly wrapped around four-year-old Lily, who was sobbing softly against her neck.

Nathan looked down into Lily’s tear-stained face. He saw her big brown eyes, her dark wavy curls, and the faint, distinct birthmark shaped like a crescent moon right near her collarbone—the exact same birthmark Nathan had carried on his own shoulder since birth.

“Daddy...” Lily whimpered again, reaching out one tiny, trembling finger to touch Nathan’s cheek.

Nathan felt a sharp, agonizing lump rise in his throat. For five years, he had believed Grace had abandoned him for another man. His father had shown him signed farewell letters, bank transfer receipts, and flight records proving Grace had taken two hundred thousand dollars and left the state.

It had all been a lie. A cold, calculated setup orchestrated by his late father and Victoria’s family to clear the path for their multi-billion-dollar corporate merger.

“Grace...” Nathan whispered, his voice cracking into a ragged sob. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“Your father said he would destroy my mother’s hospital care, Nathan,” Grace choked out through her tears, holding her daughter tighter. “He said if I ever came back to the city, he’d have Lily placed in a state institution under a false name where I’d never find her. I only took the maid job three months ago because... because I needed to know if you were still the man I loved.”

Nathan’s jaw clenched so hard the muscles in his face strained.

Behind him, his chief legal counsel, a veteran estate attorney named Mr. Vance, stepped quietly into the kitchen through the open front door. Vance looked at Victoria, then at the fallen hockey stick, and finally at Nathan holding his daughter on the floor.

Vance reached into his leather coat, pulled out a thick, sealed parchment envelope bearing the official wax seal of Nathan’s late father, and slipped it into Nathan’s pocket.