This paper shouldn't exist.
That was the first thought that slammed into her mind as her fingers trembled against the brittle parchment, the dim light of the archives flickering across ink that bore her name.
Her name,Elara Grant, etched in looping handwriting on a birth certificate that claimed she was not an orphan, not abandoned, not the forgotten child she had spent her life believing herself to be… but blood of the very family she had sworn to destroy.
The archives were not a place meant for wives, not even for wives of the Varezzis. It was a sanctum of secrets: floor-to-ceiling shelves of yellowed ledgers, bound contracts, estate records, family journals, and documents so old they seemed to breathe the dust of centuries. Few entered, and fewer left unchanged.
Elara had slipped inside under the pretense of curiosity, a restless wife with nothing to do in a mansion of endless rooms. Damien hadn't questioned her when she claimed she was exploring; he had his own wars to fight with his father, his own games of power. That distraction gave her room to move.
But this… this was not what she had expected to find.
She had come searching for financial records, hidden ties, anything that might link the Varezzi empire to the orphanage where she had been raised, a place of shadows and whispers, where children disappeared like smoke and no one asked why. What she found instead was a piece of herself. A truth she had never consented to.
Her pulse hammered in her ears as she stared at the document.
Name of child: Elara Varezzi.
Date of birth: The very same etched into the cheap file at the orphanage.
Parents:Redacted. The space where her mother's and father's names should have been was sealed with a thick black line, as though someone had deliberately blotted them out.
It wasn't just a birth certificate. It was a statement, a record that tethered her to the very blood she despised.
Elara's breath caught in her throat, jagged and uneven. She tried to reason with herself. This must be forged. Another Elara. A coincidence. But the dates aligned too perfectly. The handwriting of the registrar matched others in the archive. The seal was authentic, embossed with the Varezzi crest, an eagle with its claws wrapped around a crown.
There was no denying it.
Her entire identity, her rage, her revenge, her reason for breathing, was built on the foundation of a lie.
She staggered back, the chair behind her scraping across the marble floor. For a moment she thought the noise would summon guards, or Damien himself, but the silence remained intact. The house seemed to hold its breath with her.
Her mind spun.
If she was a Varezzi by blood, then the empire she hated was not just Damien's inheritance. It was hers too. The chains she had felt at her wedding, tightening around her throat with every vow, suddenly became something more insidious: chains of blood.
The orphanage. The missing children. The trafficked souls. The money laundered through "charitable" walls. All of it had been tied to the Varezzi family, and now, by extension, tied to her.
A nauseating thought twisted in her gut. What if I wasn't abandoned? What if I was hidden?
Memories she had long suppressed began clawing at her: blurred images of men in dark suits, whispers in corridors, the way the matrons' faces turned cold whenever her name was called. Had they known all along? Had she been raised in that hell because she was meant to disappear?
Her fingers clenched around the paper, nearly crumpling its fragile surface.
"No," she whispered fiercely to herself, though the word trembled. "No, this changes nothing. I know who I am. I know why I'm here."
Revenge. That had always been the fire in her veins. Revenge for the stolen childhood. Revenge for the children who never escaped those walls. Revenge for the hollow hunger and the endless nights of fear.
But now revenge carried a new weight, because it wasn't only vengeance against the Varezzis, it was vengeance against the part of herself that bore their cursed name.
Her thoughts snapped back as footsteps echoed faintly in the corridor beyond the archive door. Elara froze, clutching the paper to her chest.
The steps were measured, deliberate, not the shuffle of a servant. Damien.
Quickly, she shoved the certificate back into the drawer, burying it beneath stacks of faded correspondence. She closed the drawer softly, forcing her breath into a steady rhythm. She could not let him see her like this, shaken and unraveling.
The heavy door creaked open, and Damien stepped inside, his tall frame casting a shadow across the shelves. His dark eyes swept over her, sharp and unreadable.
"You've been in here a long time," he said, his voice calm but edged with suspicion. "Most people find this room suffocating."
Elara summoned a smile she didn't feel. "Perhaps I enjoy suffocating."
Damien's gaze lingered on her, as though he could see through the mask. "Or perhaps," he said slowly, "you're searching for something."
Her heart thudded painfully, but she held his stare. "And if I am? What would I possibly find here that you wouldn't already know?"
A faint smirk tugged at his mouth, but it didn't reach his eyes. "You'd be surprised at how much even I don't know. My father keeps his secrets well."
The mention of his father, the man who orchestrated this gilded cage they both inhabited, brought a flicker of something human across Damien's face. Resentment. Weariness. Perhaps even pain. For a fleeting second, Elara almost believed he could be her ally rather than her enemy. Almost.
But the paper's weight still burned in her mind, a reminder that blood bound them tighter than vows ever could.
When Damien left, Elara sagged against the shelves, her body trembling with the effort of keeping her mask intact. She knew now that the walls of this mansion held more than luxury. They held answers. Horrible, dangerous answers.
And she had a choice.
She could let the discovery consume her, derail her mission, turn her into another pawn of Varezzi power.
Or she could weaponize it, bury her fear, cling to her hunger for vengeance, and use this bloodline revelation as the sharpest blade in her arsenal.
The paper that shouldn't exist was proof. Proof she belonged to the family. Proof she had a claim. Proof she could bring them down from within not only as a wife, but as a daughter returned from the grave.
Her mission had not changed. It had sharpened.
Elara tucked the knowledge deep into her heart, sealing it with cold determination. Damien and his father could never know she had found it…not yet. The truth was a dagger, and daggers were only deadly when hidden until the right moment.
But as she turned to leave the archives, a shiver traced her spine.
For the first time in her life, Elara wasn't sure if she was hunting the Varezzis… or if they had been grooming her all along.