“Victor, how can you say they’re not your children?” my mother cried. “On your wedding night, you and Bianca were so in love! You collapsed from appendicitis in the middle of the night, and she rushed you to the hospi tal…”
“They are the fruit of your love!”
Chapter 2
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“How can you abandon them?”
I looked at them, my eyes devoid of all warmth.
“Am I talking crazy, Mom? I think you know the truth better than anyone, don’t you?”
“That ‘appendicitis’ surgery… you’re the one who arranged it for me, aren’t you? My dear, loving mother?”
“Just as you wished, I became half a man.”
“I was always just a tool for you, wasn’t I? A workhorse to support Hugo.”
“You passed off Hugo and Bianca’s children as my own. Thinking that by the time you revealed the truth, I’d be old and helpless and unable to do anything about it, right?”
“To protect Hugo’s reputation, you robbed me of my right to be a man, to be a father. Hugo never even went abroad, did he? Bianca hid him away. While I was breaking my back raising their children, they were carrying on their passionate affair! Tell me, Mom, Dad, how can you be so cruel? How can your favoritism run sc deep?”
“I was your son too!”
The room erupted. All eyes turned to Hugo, to my parents, filled with disgust and judgment. If they were the
eldest Song son, they would never acknowledge this family again.
My children-my true children-looked at me with raw pain in their eyes. They had no idea I had suffered such an injustice. This family… they were truly monstrous.
“Impossible! You’re lying!”
“How could you not be my father? If you weren’t, why would you have taken such good care of me…?” Serena s voice trailed off, her face a mask of disbelief.
“Yes, what a shame,” I said, my voice dripping with scorn. “To raise three vipers, only to find out they weren’t
mine to begin with.”
Not just Serena, but Lara and Isaac too, were staring at each other in horror, unable to accept the truth.
“No wonder… no wonder Hugo was so good to his ‘stepchildren’!”
“So the one who got played wasn’t Hugo, it was Victor!”
“This family is absolutely heartless to their eldest son…”
“I would never speak to them again. Not only did they cheat on him, but they tried to humiliate him like this,
in public!”
The tide of public opinion had turned completely.
“No… we can’t be… illegitimate…”
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So that’s why you were always so nice to me… you’re our real father.”
“No… I don’t want it!” Serena wailed, her face contorted with regret and shame. “I don’t want you to be ou father!” In their world, there was nothing more shameful than being a bastard.
Hearing her words, the last of the color drained from Hugo’s face.
“How funny,” I said. “A moment ago, you were one big happy family. Why the long faces now?”
“You got what you wanted. Hugo is your real father. Aren’t you happy?”
I looked at the wreckage of the Song family and felt nothing but a vast, empty disappointment. I had come home to make a clean break, to fulfill a final duty. It seemed it was no longer necessary.
If my three real children were ordinary people, I would have once again been trampled into the mud beneath their feet today.
This family, this so-called kinship… it was worthless.
I turned my back on them without another word and walked away.
Behind me, chaos erupted. Lara, Isaac, and Serena, their worlds shattered, turned all their fury on Hugo.
“If it wasn’t for your pathetic act, we wouldn’t have offended him! He wouldn’t have disowned us!”
The embarrassment of the Song family had shifted. It was no longer me. It was Hugo. From that day on, he was the laughingstock of their entire social circle.
On the drive home, my three children were silent, exchanging worried glances. They must have known the truth already. Known that Lara, Isaac, and Serena weren’t my biological children. The truth was too cruel, and they hadn’t wanted to ruin the holidays by forcing me to face it.
But I was no longer the Victor who desperately craved his family’s love. Blood relations… sometimes it’s all
blood, and no relation.
t wasn’t long before news came that the Song and White families had been exiled from high society. The partnership with The Clarity Group had been the only thing propping them up. Without it, they were nothing. saac, for his part in spreading malicious rumors, was blacklisted from the entertainment industry. Serena,
or academic fraud and bribery, was permanently banned from academia.
Bianca, of course, filed for divorce from Hugo. She sent a flood of expensive gifts to my house, claiming she wanted to compensate me. She and her children laid all the blame squarely at Hugo’s feet.
My former parents came to my door, old and trembling, pleading with me, trying to manipulate me with sent- ment. They looked so frail it was almost heartbreaking. But when I presented them with the DNA tests, the public’s pity turned to outrage.
‘Mom, Dad,” I said to them one last time. “This is the last time I will ever call you that.”
‘Between us, there is nothing left.”
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My children, worried about my state of mind, had dug deeper. With their resources, the truths my parents had buried so long ago were unearthed.
It turned out, I wasn’t even my mother’s biological son.
My real mother, her younger sister, had died in childbirth. Her family, ashamed, had given me to the Songs, who had just lost their own infant daughter. For a while, they treated me as their own. But then Hugo was born, and everything changed.
My years of sacrifice for the Song family had more than repaid any debt I owed them. Now, there were no ties left to bind me.
I never saw any of them again.
After my adoptive parents passed away, Hugo fell into a deep depression. Bianca continued her philandering ways. Even without their status, her habits didn’t change. She cheated on him relentlessly. Lara, Isaac, and Serena blamed Hugo for their ruined lives and did nothing to stop her. In fact, they encouraged it, hoping to gain favor with Bianca’s wealthy new lovers, fighting over whatever scraps were thrown their way.
The karma they had inflicted on me had come back to him, tenfold.
One night, unable to bear it any longer, Hugo set their grand house on fire. He and Bianca both perished in
the flames.
Lara, Isaac, and Serena were left orphans. But they were adults now. There would be no kind strangers to
take them in.
I heard this news while I was pruning the roses in my garden.
The yard was full of life and laughter.
Years had passed. Claire had become a giant in the business world. Leo had transitioned from superstar to mogul, running his own media empire. Talia was a leading figure in her field, making groundbreaking contrib
utions to national science.
They had all found their own happiness, and so had I. I met a wonderful woman who would walk with me for the rest of my days.
Looking at the sweet, babbling toddlers playing at our feet, my heart softened.
“Grandma, Grandpa, have a cookie,” the little ones toddled over, offering up freshly baked treats from their
mothers, their innocence a balm to the soul.
I looked up at the fresh green buds on the branches. The long, cold winter was finally over. The world was full of new life, new growth. A gentle smile touched my lips.
The past, with all its bitterness, was like the dead leaves of autumn. It had fallen away, crumbled into the earth, and become the very soil from which a beautiful future could finally bloom.
