THE WOMAN HE EXILED RETURNED AS THE OWNER OF HIS EMPIRE
PART 2
THE WOMAN HE EXILED RETURNED AS THE OWNER OF HIS EMPIRE
For several seconds, no one moved. Then Adrian released my waist and kissed my forehead.
“My sister has been away long enough.”
Ethan’s face changed so violently that even Olivia stepped away.
“Sister?” he repeated.
Adrian smiled. “Did you think she meant something else?”
Seven men descended the staircase behind him—lawyers, investors, and Hawthorne heirs from branches Ethan believed extinct.
I lifted my glass. “You asked about the other seven.”
Laughter crossed the ballroom. Ethan did not laugh.
Margaret Whitmore appeared near the entrance, pale and shaking. When she saw the silver hawthorn pendant around my neck, tears filled her eyes.
“Eleanor’s daughter,” she whispered.
Olivia grabbed Ethan’s sleeve. “This is a trick.”
“No,” Margaret said. “The lie was calling her an orphan.”
I faced the room.
“My mother was Eleanor Hawthorne, sole heir to the Hawthorne maritime trust. She hid me after someone tried to kill us both. Before she disappeared, she placed every controlling share in my name.”
Ethan stared at me, finally understanding why the city’s banks, docks, hotels, and half the Whitmore expansion rested on Hawthorne money.
I stepped closer.
“You didn’t send me away to nothing. You sent me back to my own people.”
His voice broke. “What do you want?”
I smiled.
“Tomorrow morning, I’m taking back everything your family built with mine.”
But before dawn, Ethan would discover the cruelest part.
I already owned the debt holding the Whitmore empire together.
