Chapter 5 - The Confrontation at Galena
Grant pushed the cabin door open without knocking, his face flushed with exhaustion and desperation.
"Rachel, please, you have to turn off your phone!" Grant blurted out, stepping into the living room, oblivious to Julian Vance standing near the counter. "The press is already calling the firm. Someone leaked a rumor about the party last night! My mother is having a nervous breakdown—"
He stopped dead in his tracks as Evelyn walked in behind him, her black wool coat buttoned to her chin, her face pale as parchment.
"Who is this man?" Evelyn demanded, her icy gaze sweeping over Julian Vance. "Rachel, I told you this matter would be handled by our family attorneys. You have no right to bring strangers into our private affairs."
"He isn't a stranger, Evelyn," Rachel said, stepping between Evelyn and Maddie, who had slid behind her mother's legs. "This is Dr. Julian Vance. Dr. Adrian Vale's nephew."
Grant blinked, looking confused. "Vale? The doctor from the clinic?"
"Tell him, Evelyn," Rachel commanded, her voice ringing out like a gavel in a courtroom. "Tell your son who Dr. Adrian Vale was."
Evelyn's chin trembled, but she maintained her aristocratic posture. "He was a distinguished medical professional who assisted our family during a difficult time thirty years ago. That is all."
"He wasn't just a doctor, Mom," Julian Vance spoke up, stepping forward and laying the open leather ledger on the dining table. "He was your lover in 1991. And he was the biological father of the boy you passed off as Arthur Bennett's heir."
Grant turned to his mother, his face twisting into a mask of complete bewilderment. "What? What is he talking about? Dad... Dad was my father!"
"Arthur Bennett was sterile, Grant!" Rachel shouted, the words crashing through the small cabin. "Just like you! Your mother went to Adrian Vale in 1991 because Arthur was dying, and she needed a male heir to secure fifty million dollars from the Bennett trust! You aren't a Bennett! You never were!"
Grant stumbled back against the doorway, his eyes wide with horror as he looked at his mother. "Mom... Mom, tell her she's lying. Tell her!"
Evelyn didn't look at Grant. She closed her eyes, her pale lips trembling, a single tear cutting a path through the heavy powder on her cheek.
"Arthur was going to leave everything to his corrupt brothers," Evelyn whispered, her voice stripped of all its usual arrogance. "I spent twenty years building that company with him. I wasn't going to let them throw us into the street. Adrian loved me. He promised me a child who would look like a Bennett... a child who would inherit everything."
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Grant let out a strangled groan, dropping his head into his hands as he sank to his knees on the wooden floor.
"And you," Rachel said, looking down at the broken man on the floor. "You threw your five-year-old daughter away at a dinner party because you were afraid of losing your 'masculinity' in front of a family that isn't even yours."
