“My God, you look just like her.” I broke down completely. “This stranger, my father,” held my hands and cried with me. He told me about my mother, how they’d met in college, how brilliant she was, how excited they’d been about having a baby, how she’d died from complications, and how he’d woken up to find his daughter gone, how he’d never stopped searching.

“I failed to protect you once,” he said. “I won’t fail again.” But then Patricia dropped another bomb. Jonathan’s younger brother, Raymond, had been running the company. He thought Jonathan had no air. Raymond was cruel, corrupt, and had been stealing from the company for years. If I revealed myself now, I could be in danger.

We need evidence against him first. Patricia said, “You need to stay hidden. Learn the business, and then when we’re ready, we take back what’s yours.” I agreed. But I had one condition. I want to destroy the Ashfords first, I said. Over the next two months, I transformed. Private tutors taught me business, finance, law.

I studied my father’s company inside and out. I learned how to walk differently, talk differently, be someone else. And I hired investigators to dig into Lucas and his family. What they found was devastating. Lucas’s business was failing. He was $2 million in debt. He’d married Diane, not for love, but because her father’s law firm could help him.

Gregory’s company was being investigated for fraud. Eleanor had a gambling addiction and had lost $800,000. Vanessa was being blackmailed over a scandal she’d tried to hide. But the worst part, Lucas had taken the $8,000 I’d saved, money from my three jobs, money I’d hidden for emergencies, and gambled it all away.

Then he’d forged my signature on loan documents. I was legally responsible for $45,000 in debts he’d created in my name. He’d planned this, married me, destroyed my credit, divorced me with the debt. I didn’t get angry. I got focused. I created a new identity. Meline Grant, a mysterious European investor. I had my hair styled differently, wore designer clothes, expensive glasses.

I looked nothing like the girl they’d thrown out in the snow. Then I approached Gregory Ashford’s company with a $10 million investment proposal. He didn’t recognize me. None of them did. The board meeting was surreal. I sat across from Gregory, Eleanor, Lucas, and here’s the twist, Raymond Wellington, my uncle. Turned out he and Gregory were partners in a shady real estate scheme.

Miss Grant, Gregory said, practically drooling. Your offer is very generous. I believe in investing in the right people, I said, looking directly at Lucas. He kept staring at me like something was familiar, but he couldn’t place it. Eleanor insisted on a celebration dinner at the mansion, the same mansion where they’d humiliated me.

I wore an elegant taupe cashmere dress and walked through those doors like I owned them. Lucas was there with Diane, who was now his wife. She was pregnant. But my investigators had already told me the truth. The baby wasn’t Lucas’s. She’d been pregnant before they even got married. The real father was her ex-boyfriend, Eric, and she’d trapped Lucas for his money.

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