Chapter 1: A Stormy Night and the Cry at Dawn
Chapter 1: A Stormy Night and the Cry at Dawn
After the swift divorce, I had no one left to lean on. Looking at my circumstances, the greatest asset I possessed was the tiny life growing inside my womb. To provide for my child, I swallowed my pride and threw myself into every single job I could find. I rented a cramped, shabby room located directly above a noisy laundromat. By day, I hunched over folding bakery boxes; at dusk, I translated tax forms for cash; and when night fell, I cleaned corporate offices. Every gentle kick from my baby inside felt like an invisible reminder, giving me the strength to never allow myself to fall apart.
Then, the day I went into labor finally arrived, right in the middle of a thunderstorm with raging lightning. I dialed number after number on my phone, but my calls were answered only by long, hopeless rings. Ethan—my ex-husband—did not pick up. My own mother, who completely believed the Vales' lies, had cut off all contact. Even Vanessa, my former best friend who had once sworn her loyalty, was busy posting photos taken in my old kitchen, captioned mockingly about "new beginnings."
Left with no other choice, I clutched my abdomen and forced myself into the driver’s seat to go to the hospital. Through every intersection, at every red light, the contractions hit me so hard they tore through my body, leaving me with nothing to do but grip the steering wheel and scream into the emptiness. By the time my car pulled up to Hart Memorial Hospital, my dress was soaked with sweat and amniotic fluid, my body was trembling uncontrollably, and my pride had been thoroughly burned to ash.
But then, the moment my son let out his first cry, the sound cut through the room like a sharp blade, banishing all the gloom of the stormy night. Minutes after my baby arrived, Dr. Samuel Hart—the chief of obstetrics—looked down at the child and suddenly broke into tears.
"This… this can’t be possible," he whispered, his voice trembling.
At that moment, I was still lying on the delivery bed, my hands gripping the sheets, my entire body still shaking from shock. Hearing the doctor's words, my heart tightened. I immediately feared the worst—that my baby had a deformity or wouldn't survive.
"What's wrong with him, Doctor?" I rasped, my voice hoarse.
Dr. Hart didn’t answer right away. He stared intently at a tiny, crescent-shaped birthmark under my son’s left collarbone, then looked up at me with an expression as if he had just seen a ghost from the past. After signaling the nurses to take the baby to be cleaned and weighed, he took a deep breath to compose himself, walked over, and gripped my ice-cold hand.
"Mrs. Vale… the child is perfectly healthy. But this birthmark… and this face… he looks exactly like my older brother, Edward Hart, when he was a boy."
I looked at him blankly. "Edward Hart? But my ex-husband is Ethan Vale…"
"Edward was Ethan’s late father!" Dr. Hart’s voice shook violently. "My brother had an extremely rare, hereditary congenital birthmark at this exact spot. He passed away in a mysterious car accident 25 years ago, right before Margaret gave birth to Ethan. When Ethan was born, Margaret claimed the baby didn't have his father's birthmark. At the time, we thought the trait had been lost…"
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He leaned in close, his eyes filled with shock and dawning fury. "Claire, if your son carries this birthmark, it proves my brother's genes are incredibly pure and dominant in him. But that also means another truth… Ethan Vale is not my brother's biological son. Margaret committed adultery, had Ethan, and then schemed to legitimize the pregnancy to usurp the Hart estate. She framed you for carrying another man's child because she was the one who did exactly that in the past!"
Tears streamed down my face, but not from humiliation. They were tears of shock as a terrifying truth was unraveled. I watched the tiny figure of my son, vowing to myself in my heart: My son, we are no longer alone.
