Chapter 2 - Shadows of Zurich
The truth was a sudden, violent earthquake. My real name was Elena, a woman who had spent two years grieving a child who had been breathing the same air just miles away. Damian explained that two years ago, his wife, Sophia, had passed away from pregnancy complications in a private clinic in Zurich—the exact same facility where I had undergone an emergency caesarean section after a staged accident. Someone inside the clinic had swapped records, bribed the attending physician, and declared my baby stillborn while presenting the healthy infant to Damian as his newborn daughter.
"Why?" I gasped, holding Leah close as she finally fell asleep against my chest, her thumb tucked in her mouth. "Why swap us? Why give her to you?" Damian’s eyes burned with a dark, bitter fire. "Because my late wife's family needed an heir to secure the Caruso bloodline and claim a multi-billion-dollar trust," he revealed. "If Sophia died without a living child, her family lost everything to me. They couldn't let her die childless. So they found a solitary woman in the same ward—someone without a powerful family to raise questions—and took her child."
