Chapter 1

My adopted daughter won a top science prize, and when she walked up to give her acceptance speech, I was overjoyed.

Then I listened as she thanked her professors, her friends, even her friend's dog, even the janitor who cleaned the lab, and never once got to me.

At the very end, just as I thought she would finally say the name of the woman who raised her,

she said, "The person I most want to thank is my birth mother..."

I froze. I didn't understand. What exactly had I done to wrong her?

For twenty years I raised her in comfort, gave her the finest of everything.

She said she wanted to be a scientist, so I poured hundreds of millions into building her a lab, recruiting the best people,

carried her all the way to the stage of a top science prize, and couldn't earn a single word of thanks.

Until, at the interview after the ceremony, a reporter asked her,

"I hear you also have an adoptive mother. Why didn't we hear you thank her tonight?"

Her face darkened, and she said,

"Everything I've achieved comes entirely from my own effort. It has nothing to do with my adoptive mother!"

"If she hadn't torn me away from my birth mother back then, I'd have won this award much sooner, raised under my real mother's care."

Her words made me laugh out of sheer anger. I made a single phone call right there.

"Cancel all funding to Vanessa Sharpe's lab."

She said her achievements had nothing to do with me, didn't she?

Then from today, you can go let your real mother raise you.

...

I hung up just as Vanessa finished her interview and walked over.

"Since you heard all that, you should take some time to reflect on yourself."

There wasn't a trace of guilt on her face, only self-righteous arrogance.

I looked at her, and I almost found it funny.

"Reflect?" I looked her in the eye. "Reflect on what?"

Vanessa frowned, impatient.

"Are you really this dense, or are you faking it?"

"If you hadn't forced me apart from my birth mother back then, would I have spent twenty years living under someone else's roof?"

"You funded my lab. On the surface you were supporting me, but really?"

"You planted your own company's people on my team so you could tell me what to do."

"And when I was little, you forced me to learn piano, horseback riding, ballet,"

"signed me up for a pile of useless hobby classes that seriously held back my development in science."

"Otherwise, I'd have won this award five years ago."

Listening to her stream of accusations, a heavy pressure settled in my chest.

Twenty years ago, I was driving when a woman suddenly threw herself in front of my car, faking an accident.

Out of kindness, I took her and her daughter to the hospital and paid the medical bills up front.

Then, while I was off settling the payment,

that woman dumped five-year-old Vanessa in the hospital lobby and vanished without a trace.

I called the police. I searched for a full six months. Nothing.

Looking at the thin little girl in the orphanage, all skin and bone,

my heart softened, and I filed the adoption papers.

For twenty years, I held her in the palm of my hand.

She said she wanted to play piano, so I hired a world-class master to tutor her one on one.

She said she wanted to do research, and without a word I set aside three hundred million in dedicated funding,

built her the finest lab in the country, and paid top salaries to bring in an elite team from overseas.

And now she says I forced her apart from her birth mother?

"Your birth mother dumped you at the hospital and ran off. Was that my doing too?"

I looked at her, cold.

Vanessa's face went stiff.

"That's because my mom was too poor back then! She gave me up so I could have a better life, it broke her heart to do it!"

"What would a money-grubbing capitalist like you know about the greatness of a mother's love?"

I drew in a deep breath and pushed down the chill rising in me.

I thought back to five years ago, Vanessa's twentieth birthday, when the woman who had disappeared for fifteen years suddenly reappeared.

She knelt weeping in front of Vanessa, saying she'd had no choice back then, saying her life was better now and she wanted to make it up to her.

At the time Vanessa shrank behind me, refusing her, pointing at the woman and calling her a fraud,

insisting over and over that I was her only mother.

I was so moved I could hardly stand it. To calm Vanessa down, I even

gave the woman a sum of money and sent her away.

"So the two of you have actually been in contact ever since?" I stared into Vanessa's eyes.

Vanessa lifted her chin and admitted it without the slightest hesitation.

"So what if we have? If I weren't afraid of hurting your feelings and making you jealous, would my mom have had to sneak around every time she saw me?"

"She gave birth to me. She gave me the best genes. Everything I've achieved in science comes from the intelligence she passed down to me."

"What have you done besides throw money around?"

I nodded, and the last thread of warmth in my heart went completely cold.

"Since you think I meddle in your lab, fine."

Right in front of her, I called my assistant, Victor Wells.

"Victor, pass the word along. Pull every one of the company's people out of Vanessa Sharpe's lab immediately."

"And cut off all further funding to that lab. Recover every piece of precision equipment we loaned out."

I hung up and looked at Vanessa.

"Since my money held back your future, then from today, I'll stop playing the villain."