The hospital corridor smelled of antiseptic and smoke.
Chaos reigned. Nurses shouted, patients screamed, and somewhere nearby, an explosion rattled the already crumbling west wing.
Clarissa Lin clutched her newborn daughter to her chest, her lips pale, her eyes wild with fear. Edward stood beside her, his jaw clenched, shouting at the nearest doctor.
"Where is she?! Where is the nurse with our second baby?!"
The staff looked at each other, panic rising in their faces. Alarms wailed.
"There was a mix-up," someone whispered. "A janitor took one baby thinking she was another. And the fire..."
Clarissa's heart clenched. One child was in her arms. But the other...
Elsewhere, in another chaotic corner of the hospital, a frail elderly woman—Mildred Thompson—held a sleeping infant close to her chest. The child had been abandoned, switched, overlooked. And Mildred had taken her, naming her after no one, raising her without knowing the blood that ran through her veins.
Three families would never be the same after that night.
And the child who should have inherited a dynasty would grow up hidden, in silence and shadows.
Until now.
Next Chapter Teaser: What happens when the forgotten child dares to step back into the world that erased her? A quiet breakfast becomes a final goodbye...