Chapter 1
My husband’s mother, Eloise Fowler, and I, Hazel Wilson, became pregnant almost simultaneously and gave birth via C-section on the same day, each delivering a baby boy.
However, Eloise’s son Henry Fowler died unexpectedly in infancy. Heartbroken, she poured all her love into my son Jasper Fowler.
Shortly after Jasper officially took over the company, Stephen and I died in a rafting accident.
After death, my soul remained by Jasper’s side.
Yet I witnessed him kneeling before Eloise, calling her “Mom”!
Only then did I realize that the son I had painstakingly raised for twenty years had been secretly switched by Eloise!
When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day Eloise and I both had our C-sections.
*****
My husband Stephen Fowler and I drowned in the rapids.
After death, my soul didn’t dissipate but returned to Jasper’s side.
I watched him solemnly hold our funeral.
But as soon as the funeral ended, he said impatiently, “Those two are finally dead. This time it finally worked!”
I was stunned. Was he talking about Stephen and me?
Jasper stared at our portraits with pure hatred in his eyes, making my heart clench.
I didn’t understand why he would hate us.
We were his biological parents who had devoted over twenty
of our lives to raising him, even naming him as the beneficiary on all our insurance policies!
years
Just then, Eloise cautiously approached and asked Jasper, “Will the police suspect this has anything to do with us?”
Jasper gave her a reassuring look: “Don’t worry, I handled this cleanly. Besides, the accident report is already in—it’s ruled as accidental death. They just had bad luck.”
I was shocked. So Stephen’s and my deaths weren’t accidents, but were orchestrated by our most beloved son!
I couldn’t help but recall that ever since Jasper inherited the family business, Stephen and I had frequently encountered “accidents,” though we’d narrowly escaped each time.
Chapter
This time, he had also suggested the family rafting trip. The rope snapped, and Stephen and I were swept away by the rapids to our deaths.
Why would he do this?
Before I could think further, I saw Jasper kneel before Eloise, crying as he called out, “Mom! I can finally call you Mom openly! All these years you’ve suffered, having to watch me call other people Mom and Dad!”
Eloise also had tears in her eyes as she held Jasper tightly: “The Fowler family fortune should stay with our own family. I couldn’t let it fall into outsiders’ hands.”
Seeing this scene, I finally understood everything.
Years ago, after Eloise’s husband John Fowler died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage, she discovered she was pregnant, ten days ahead of me.
Stephen and I both advised her to terminate the pregnancy, but she knelt before us, crying that if we wanted her to abort the child, she’d rather die right then and there.
Unable to persuade her otherwise, we let her have the baby.
Since Eloise was an older mother and had always treated me well, during her pregnancy we provided the best nutrition and premium care, never missing a beat.
We even arranged for her to stay with me at a high-end maternity center costing tens of thousands of dollars per day.
From their conversation, I learned that Stephen wasn’t actually John and Eloise’s biological son.
To control the family fortune, Eloise had risked the dangers of being an older mother to bear her biological son and switched him with our child.
Fearing exposure and wanting her son to naturally inherit all the love and attention, she cruelly killed my biological son, then pretended to be devastated while coming to our home to care for that “replacement.”
This meant that Henry, who died in infancy over twenty years ago, was actually my biological son!
And the child I had raised with such dedication was someone else’s son, who had personally orchestrated Stephen’s and my deaths!
I wanted nothing more than to rush forward and kill this mother-son pair!
But the next second, everything went dark before my eyes.
