After the Pampered Fake Heiress Killed My Real Daughter, I Went Ruthless

I spent twenty years searching for my daughter, only to learn she had died ten years ago.

The moment Job Finch put the file in my hands, I turned through it page by page, and I dropped to the floor, sobbing.

At ten years old she was sent to an orphanage. She scavenged for scraps and washed dishes, and she clawed her way into a top high school.

Through those three years she tutored on the side and worked at a coffee shop, and she put herself through college.

But half a year after she graduated, she was dead.

When she died, her name wasn't a clean one. An accidental pregnancy, a hemorrhage, and a scandal that she'd seduced some rich man's son.

Job helped me to my feet and looked at me, uneasy.

"Ms. Harding, there's one more file here, about the young miss's boyfriend. You should see it."

I wiped my eyes, and the instant I took the file, I went rigid.

The first page bore the name of the successor I had groomed with my own hands, my current son-in-law: Phil Whitney.

I couldn't accept it. I stared at the file and flipped ahead in a panic.

Graduate of Harbor State University. Born June 4, 1996. Registered residence: Ashwin Children's Home, Fairview County.

After a long while, I lifted my head and turned my gaze to Old Finch.

He stepped forward at once and spoke gravely.

"Ms. Harding, I went to Fairview County myself to look into it. Mr. Whitney is the boyfriend your daughter grew up with in that orphanage."

As he said it, he handed me a small photograph.

In it, a young girl and boy pressed their heads close together, smiling, happy.

The girl's face was so familiar that my tears fell again all at once.

The girl was Layla Harding at eighteen, and the boy, though he'd shed the softness of youth and taken on a moneyed poise, was still unmistakably Phil.

I pressed the photo hard against my chest and wailed.

"My girl. My baby. Mama is so sorry."

Back then my husband had died young, and to keep us fed I ran a stall alone at the night market, with Layla tied to the cart behind me.

All because one customer kept pestering me, and when I turned around, my three-year-old daughter was gone.

I searched like a woman gone mad for seven days and seven nights, and found nothing.

For years I traveled everywhere running my stall while I looked for her.

Later, business slowly picked up, and I opened a trading company.

For something to hold on to, I adopted an orphan who looked faintly like my daughter, Eliana Harding.

She was sweet and sensible, made it through college without trouble, and married a fine young man from the company.

That young man was Phil Whitney.

I never imagined he'd been that close to my own flesh and blood.

If he really was my daughter's childhood sweetheart, then was the child in her belly his? And how much of her death was on him?

And what had that scandal really been?

I wiped my eyes, slowly straightened, and my voice went hard.

"Job, keep digging into everyone and everything the young miss dealt with before she died. I want to know how she really died."

"Whatever it costs."

I spent an entire day getting my emotions back under control. When I came home that evening, Eliana Harding was sprawled across the sofa eating imported cherries, giggling at some show.

She was wearing one of the designer nightgowns I'd brought back from the States. Ninety-nine hundred dollars apiece.

Ten of them, different styles, all ordered by me.

Because I wanted to make up for everything I owed Layla.

Phil was busy in the kitchen, making dinner and simmering a pot of chicken soup, wearing the loungewear I'd bought him at the luxury boutique.

Three thousand a set.

Seeing me come in, my daughter got up, cradling her slightly rounded belly, and wrapped her arms around me.

"Mom, you shouldn't wear yourself out at the company anymore. You've got Phil now. What is there left to worry about?"

Phil came out just then, carrying the soup.

"Mom, taste this. I just finished it."

He blew on it carefully and held the spoon out to me, watching me with a nervous look.

I pressed down the ache in my chest, took a small sip, and forced up a smile.

"Not bad. Phil's cooking keeps getting better."

Eliana raised her eyebrows and said happily,

"Of course it does. With a wife as good as me, how could he not be a catch?"

Phil gave a gentle smile too and reached over to pull Eliana against him.

"Taking care of my wife and being a good son to you is what I should do. I'm an orphan with no family of my own. Ellie gave me a whole family."

He held Ellie close and kissed her on the forehead.

Eliana nestled into his arms and started listing off all the designer baby things I'd bought her, then lifted her chin and showed off proudly,

"Phil, Mom loves me best. She said once I have the second baby, the shares go to us, and you'll officially be the CEO of Harding Group."

A flash of wild joy crossed Phil's eyes, and his expression turned even gentler in an instant.

"You've worked so hard, sweetheart. From now on I'll take good care of you and the children, and be a devoted son to Mom. I won't let all her grooming go to waste."

I studied my daughter and son-in-law through half-lowered eyes. My daughter, lively and cheerful, dutiful and sweet-tongued. My son-in-law, refined and courteous. At their wedding, everyone had told me how lucky I was.

They even had an adorable daughter in an international school, and now a second baby on the way.

I pressed down the churning inside me and dug my nails hard into my palm.

No. Eliana was the child I'd raised with my own hands, always good, always sensible. She wouldn't.

Layla's death couldn't have been her doing.

At that thought my heart drowned in fresh tears, and Job Finch's words rang in my ears.

"Ms. Harding, the young lady collapsed once from anemia. She kept her monthly living expenses to three hundred dollars. Her heaviest recorded weight was eighty-six pounds."

I slowly set the soup down and probed carefully.

"Phil, it hasn't been easy for you, all on your own. Did you have any good friends at the orphanage? Someone we could look after."

Phil's face tensed at once, and he straightened up to explain.

"Mom, what friends could there be at an orphanage? All I ever thought about growing up was studying hard and making something of myself. I hardly ever ran around with those people."

"And now all I care about is running the company well. Why would I still keep in touch with them?"

Something in my chest dropped, and my gaze couldn't help sharpening.

Phil. He was lying.

Watching how quickly Phil composed himself, I found I didn't know how to open my mouth.

Just then my phone buzzed, over and over. I opened the message, and in an instant every drop of blood in me froze, my whole body plunged into ice.

The message was only a few lines.

"Ms. Harding, Miss Eliana had contact with the young lady too. At one point things blew up loudly between the three of them and Mr. Whitney."

"Miss Eliana hired people to teach the young lady a lesson. They broke her arm."

"The young lady's cause of death was hemorrhaging during a miscarriage. They say the child was some street thug's, and it seems the young lady was also being abused by them. Others say she kept improper relations with them for money. I'm still investigating the final truth."

Then came several photos.

My daughter walking through the lobby of my Harding Group. Eliana, her face twisted, swinging her hand and slapping Layla across the face. Layla on the floor, congee from an overturned thermos spilled all across the ground beside her.

Everyone crowded around Layla as she knelt there in disgrace, kneeling before Ellie.

I forced my eyes wide and stared at the photos, and I remembered that before the wedding, a girl had come to the company saying she was Phil's girlfriend. Ellie had even quarreled with Phil over it for a while.

Later Phil explained that she was a friend from the orphanage, one who'd always liked him and kept clinging to him, that he'd never had any feelings for her.

After that, I was buried in work and left those young-people's affairs alone.

I never imagined that girl was my Layla.

I stared at my daughter's hand resting on my shoulder, kneading it.

That was the very hand that had once slapped Layla across the face, and spread the rumors that she'd seduced Phil, that she was clawing her way up to money and power.

That very hand may even have used my money, transferring it to hire street thugs to corner Layla, to torment and abuse her, to spread every kind of lie.

Looking at the photos, wave after wave of suffocation blackened my vision. I couldn't imagine how helpless Layla had been then, how that small, thin body of hers had endured those fists and kicks, those cruel whispers.

My gentle, sweet Ellie, how could she be so vicious, so overbearing?

They were heartless enough to have killed my Layla.

My daughter looked at me, puzzled.

"Mom, you don't look well. Did something happen today?"

Phil spoke up right on cue.

"Mom, if you really feel off, go to the hospital and get checked. Maybe your heart's acting up again."

"Oh, right, Mom, I got you a wellness membership at Cloudcrest Manor. Go stay there a couple of months, rest for a while."

I slowly pushed myself upright, forcing fresh air into my lungs, holding down the fury surging through me.

No. My Layla was still waiting for me. I couldn't fall apart.

Three minutes later I sat up calmly, and slowly drank the soup that had gone cold to steady myself.

"It's nothing."

"Phil, Eliana's pregnant, and I'm getting old, and the two of you already have two children. I really do mean to arrange the family shares early. I want to transfer them into your names."

The words were barely out before joy lit up both their faces. Eliana's eyes brightened, and she leaned in at once, hooking her arm through mine and nuzzling against my arm.

"I knew Mom loved me best. Thank you, Mom."

Phil got to his feet as well, his tone growing more respectful and humble.

"Thank you, Mom. I'll run the company well, and honor you for the rest of your life."

I smiled and slowly rose, walking toward the bedroom.

The moment the door closed, all the warmth drained out of my eyes. I called up an old friend.

"Joel James, look into everything Phil Whitney's been doing at the company. I want my company back."

The next morning, Job Finch set a thick stack of files in front of me, his voice breaking.

"Ms. Harding, we've got it. We've got all of it."

"A few of those street thugs. One scare and they told me everything."

"Miss Layla really was killed by them."

Job turned and walked toward the door, and the bodyguards shoved several men forward and kicked them down in front of me.

"Ms. Harding, this is the attending doctor from back then. Let him tell you himself."

My hands shook as I gripped the files, my eyes bloodshot, staring at the gray-haired doctor in front of me.

Job's furious voice sounded in my ear.

"Back then, Miss Layla worked three jobs to put Phil Whitney through grad school, and only managed a plain undergrad degree for herself."

"After Phil graduated, he applied to our company, and the two of them rented a basement nearby and moved in together."

"Then, somehow, Miss Eliana took a liking to Mr. Whitney, and he threw Miss Layla over."

"A few days later, Miss Layla was set on by some thugs on the street, and then all kinds of rumors started, saying she'd sold her body to them for money."

"In the end, Phil beat Miss Layla, called her shameless, and made her miscarry on the spot."

Job's voice choked as he went on.

"When Miss Layla got to the hospital, she was still thinking of Phil. She said she'd slipped and fallen by accident. From start to finish she never once said he'd hit her. And he, he actually bribed a doctor to kill her."

The old doctor dropped to his knees in front of me, weeping and confessing.

"Chairwoman Harding, I wronged your daughter. I wronged Miss Layla."

"All these years I've had nightmares every night. My conscience has never let me rest. Today I can finally tell the truth. I was forced into it, I was."

Sobbing, he laid out every dark thing that had happened back then, and every word tore me apart.

Back then, Layla had only suffered a threatened miscarriage from the impact. The injury wasn't fatal. With prompt treatment, both mother and child could have been saved.

It was Phil who came to him, threatening him with a huge sum of cash and his career, and had him switch the medication in secret, quietly using a banned drug to speed up the bleeding.

He was too young then, newly married with a child, and he didn't dare cross the Harding family's future son-in-law.

"Miss Layla was so pitiful..."

The doctor wiped his tears, crying bitterly.

"She was in so much pain, and she still begged us to save the baby."

"She told me she was an orphan, that she'd been bullied without end at the children's home, and that all she wanted in this life was a child of her own, a family."

"She said she didn't blame her boyfriend, that she'd brought the trouble on herself, and that he was hurting too."

I couldn't hold back my rage any longer. I slammed my fist into the jade ornament and let the blood run in streams onto the desk.

It splashed across the stack of files.

The statements also recorded, plainly, the confessions of those street thugs.

It was Eliana who found them, telling them Layla was a cheap slut who'd sleep with anyone, that she'd seduced her boyfriend.

She gave them twenty thousand and told them to give her what she deserved, and had them take photographs of the abuse.

She ordered them without a shred of hesitation, saying if anything went wrong she'd take responsibility, that she was the heir to Harding Group.

My heart hurt worse, as if it were being ripped apart and crushed over and over.

My Layla, my poor, ill-fated daughter.

The daughter I'd searched for twenty whole years, only to pass her by.

She was only twenty-two.

She was diligent and hardworking, kind and loyal, and she never hurt a single soul.

She'd endured all that suffering alone, and just when the hard days looked ready to end, the man she'd loved for over ten years, the man she'd given her heart to for over ten years, pushed her into the abyss with his own hands and killed her outright.

And even after death, she had to carry that filthy name.

While the real killers, wrapped in refined, gentlemanly clothes, ran my Harding empire, lived side by side, sat on my fortune, and enjoyed endless glory.

"Phil Whitney... Eliana Harding..."

My voice was cold as poison-tempered ice.

"I will make you pay blood for blood, and win justice for my Layla."

With the evidence airtight, I went straight to the police.

I handed everything over and filed formal chargesPhil Whitney and Eliana Harding, for hiring a killer, for causing a death, for malicious slander, for all of it.

I had just handed in the evidence and stepped out through the station doors when Joel called. His voice was low.

"Selina, I dug into it. In the two years you were gone, Phil already reshuffled the whole company. Every senior employee who didn't fall in line, he swapped out for his own people."

"He replaced a lot of the company's clients too. Last year he opened up the new Ridgemont market and won the backing of the four great families there. Taking the company back now won't be easy."

"Selina, I watched you build all of this. Phil is clever. You need to be careful."

My heart sank. I'd always known he was moving people around. I told myself it was just a young man impatient with the old guard, that some reshuffling was normal.

I never imagined he'd been planning it all along, closing in step by step to swallow up my company.

Thirty years in business, and I'd seen plenty of cunning, two-faced people. I wasn't a fool. I'd simply trusted Eliana's sweetness and devotion, and his fawning little courtesies, and let my guard down.

The police arrested Phil under the law. But barely two days later, he was out on bail.

The reason: the doctor had turned around and claimed I'd coerced his confession, that the chain of evidence was too weak, that some of the testimony couldn't stand, that the conditions for holding him weren't met.

The moment I heard, the cold went through me like I'd dropped into ice.

I had underestimated Phil. Ten years, and he'd already built himself real standing, real power.

He sat in the conference room on the twenty-eighth floor of Harding Group, looking at me with pure arrogance.

"Mom, you said yourself your health isn't good. Wouldn't it be better to just rest at home? Why go digging up things that happened years ago?"

"Layla really did die in an accident. I'm heartbroken too. Why do you have to be so suspicious of everything?"

Then he walked over and took my arm, sighed, put on his grief.

"What was between Layla and me can't be explained in a sentence or two. I didn't even know she was your real daughter. But whether she was or wasn't, I'm still your son-in-law, aren't I? From now on I'll take her place and look after you properly."

Watching him stand there so unbothered, so certain it was all his due, I couldn't hold the fury back any longer. My hand came up and I slapped him hard across the face.

"Phil Whitney. Layla was so good to you. How could you have the heart to kill her? The police may have let you go, but I never will."

I turned to face every shareholder in the room and said it flat and hard.

"Given that Phil Whitney's conduct is disgraceful and that he is currently under investigation, I move to remove him from the position of executive CEO."

The words had barely left me when an unfamiliar face stood up from a corner, sharp and urgent.

"Ms. Harding, you can't bring a personal grudge into the company."

"Mr. Whitney just signed a lifetime partnership with the four great families of the Ridgemont region. Strip his executive authority and the company loses half its orders."

I looked the man over. It came back to me in a haze that he was often at Phil's side. When had he earned a seat on the board?

Before I could even rebuke him, several of the other shareholders actually nodded along.

"Ms. Harding, the company's growth has to come first. Isn't there some misunderstanding here?"

"Ms. Harding, don't be upset. We're all family. Whatever it is, just lay it out and talk it through. There's no need to drag it into a shareholders' meeting."

"Ms. Harding, Mr. Whitney has poured himself into this company. Profits have tripled three years running. You can't act out of anger."

One after another they rose and crowded around me, coaxing.

Looking at those faces, strange and familiar at once, I let out a scornful laugh. Phil was good, all right.

In just a few years, he'd bought up and taken hold of Harding Group from top to bottom. I had become chairwoman in name only, an emptied-out shell with no real power.

Two old friends spoke up, unhappy.

"Mr. Whitney is caught up in an old case now. Suspending him is for the company's own gooddon't let it drag the company into a scandal."

"Exactly. Ability is one thing, character is another. Have you all forgotten the principle we followed when we founded Harding Group with Ms. Harding? Honest, grounded, upright dealing."

In an instant the conference room split in two, arguing until there was no end to it.

Phil just watched me coldly across the crowd. After a long moment, he slapped the table.

"Since we can't agree, then let's open a board election for executive director."

He gave me a contemptuous look.

"Mom, I only hold ten percent of the shares myself. But Ellie has twenty. Together that's thirty percent."

"And the agreement the four great families of the Ridgemont region signed names me specifically. They'll only deal with me. So tell meam I not better suited than you to serve as executive CEO of Harding Group?"

Something in me went cold, and then I remembered: when Eliana was pregnant with her second child, I'd given her ten percent. On top of her original ten, they really did hold thirty percent between them.

And I held thirty percent too.

That day, everyone coaxed me not to cling to something in the past, praising how filial and sensible Eliana was, how capable Phil was.

They told me to let go of my personal grudge, to put the company first, to put the families of a thousand employees first.

That day, I walked the streets a whole night, watching a slow red glow rise at the edge of the sky.

Phil Whitney, you're just betting that Harding Group is my life's work, that the thousand employees inside it are my family, that I can't bear to destroy it.

You're wrong.

If wicked people can't be brought to justice, then the bigger the company, the more harm it does to the world.

Slowly I picked up my phone and dialed a news reporter.

"Nine o'clock today. Please be at the conference room on the twenty-eighth floor of Harding Group on time. It's a first-hand storyI'm going to donate all of Harding Group's assets to society for the public good."