The man slowly turned toward the woman in white.

“What did you tell her?”

She backed away.

“She’s lying.”

The maid shook her head.

“For seven months, she kept me in the servants’ wing.”

His face drained of color.

The maid continued.

“She took my phone. My documents. Every letter I tried to send you.”

The man looked sick.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

The woman in white snapped,

“Because that child would have destroyed everything!”

Silence.

Even she realized too late what she had admitted.

The man stood.

“What does that mean?”

The maid reached beneath her stained uniform and pulled out a folded hospital envelope.

Inside was an ultrasound.

And beneath it, a DNA report.

The man read the page.

His hands began shaking.

The woman whispered,

“Don’t.”

He looked at her.

“The baby is mine.”

The maid nodded, crying.

The woman in white closed her eyes.

The man’s voice turned cold.

“You knew.”

“Yes.”

“Then why tell me she lost it?”

The woman finally broke.

“Because once that baby was born, you would find out the truth.”

He stared at her.

“What truth?”

The maid answered for her.

“She isn’t your mother.”

The man stopped breathing.

The maid looked at the terrified woman in white.

“She’s the woman who paid the hospital thirty-five years ago to tell your real mother that you died.”