The folder sits between us on the coffee table, Isabella's parting gift—a Pandora's box containing all my secrets, all my carefully hidden truths. But I won't let Isabella Pierce control this narrative. If my relationship with Ethan is to have any chance of surviving, he needs to hear the truth from me, not from a dossier compiled by my enemies.

"Before I start," I say, meeting Ethan's gaze directly, "I need you to understand something. What I'm about to tell you... it doesn't change how I feel about you now. Or about Leo. Whatever brought us together initially, what's grown between us is real."


Ethan's expression remains guarded, but he nods. "I'm listening."

I take a deep breath, searching for the right place to begin this tangled story. "My name isn't just Olivia Knight, or even Olivia Morgan as I was known before our marriage. My full birth name is Olivia Eleanor Morgan—daughter of Charles Morgan and his first wife, Eleanor."

Ethan's eyes widen slightly, the first piece clicking into place. "Charles Morgan... of Morgan Group? The man we're negotiating with?"


"Yes," I confirm. "My father."

"But that would make you..." Ethan pauses, processing the implications.


"Cassandra Morgan's stepsister," I finish for him. "The disgraced daughter who disappeared from New York five years ago after a scandal that destroyed her reputation and career."

Ethan leans back, studying me with new intensity. "The night at the hotel," he says slowly. "That wasn't our first meeting, was it?"

"It was," I correct him. "But it wasn't coincidental. We were both drugged and set up by Cassandra and Nathaniel Pierce as part of a scheme to destroy me professionally."

I watch as understanding dawns in his eyes—the pieces of our shared past finally aligning into a coherent picture. "The drugs in our system... the memory gaps... it was deliberate."

"Yes," I confirm. "Cassandra wanted me out of Morgan Group. I was the heir apparent, my father's chosen successor. She was jealous, resentful of my position. So she orchestrated my downfall."

"By making it appear we'd had a drunken one-night stand," Ethan concludes, his voice hardening with anger. "Using me as a weapon against you."

"You were a convenient target," I explain. "A competitor, someone whose involvement with me would look especially inappropriate given the business relationship between our companies. They drugged us both, arranged for hotel security footage that made it appear I was behaving inappropriately, spread rumors that I was unstable, using drugs, sleeping with competitors for business advantage."

Ethan's jaw tightens as he absorbs this. "And your father believed these lies?"

"Everyone did," I say, the old pain surfacing despite my efforts to keep it at bay. "The 'evidence' was compelling—security footage, witness statements, even doctored financial records suggesting I'd been embezzling company funds. By the time I woke up in that hotel room, my reputation was already in tatters, my position at Morgan Group eliminated, my father refusing to see or speak to me."

"So you left New York," Ethan says, filling in the gap.

"I had no choice," I reply. "I was pregnant, disgraced, cut off financially. My apartment was company-owned, my bank accounts frozen pending investigation of the embezzlement charges. I used the last of my personal savings to flee to Singapore, where I gave birth to Leo and eventually built Ascendant Group from nothing."

Ethan is silent for a long moment, processing everything I've revealed. When he speaks again, his voice is carefully controlled. "And your return to New York? Your specific interest in acquiring parts of Morgan Group? Your arrangement to meet me and establish paternity of Leo? That was all part of a revenge plan."

It's not a question, but I answer anyway. "Yes. I came back to reclaim what was stolen from me—my birthright, my reputation, my place in my father's company. And to make those responsible pay for what they did."

"Including me?" Ethan asks, his eyes searching mine.

"At first, I wasn't sure of your role," I admit honestly. "Whether you were a victim like me or complicit in Cassandra's scheme. The DNA test and our marriage arrangement gave me access to your world, your connections, your protection while I executed my plan."

Pain flashes across Ethan's face at this confirmation of his worst fears. "So our marriage was just a strategic move in your revenge game. Leo and I were pawns."

"Initially," I acknowledge, knowing I owe him complete honesty now. "But Ethan, that changed. You must know that changed."

"Did it?" he challenges, rising from the sofa to pace the room, his controlled exterior finally cracking. "Or is that just another convenient narrative? How am I supposed to trust anything between us now, knowing it was built on such a foundation?"

The question cuts deep because it's entirely fair. How can he trust me after learning our entire relationship began as a calculated deception?

"You're right to question everything," I say quietly. "I've given you every reason to doubt me. But the one thing that has never been a lie is how I feel about you now. How we've become a family, the three of us. That's real, Ethan. Whatever my initial motives, what's grown between us is genuine."

He stops pacing to look at me, conflict evident in his expression. "There's more, isn't there? You haven't told me everything yet."

Perceptive as always. I nod, steeling myself for the most difficult part of my confession. "Cassandra didn't just destroy my career and reputation. She—along with her mother Diana—murdered my mother."

Ethan's expression shifts from anger to shock. "What?"

"My mother had a heart condition," I explain, the words coming easier now that I've started. "Manageable with medication, not immediately life-threatening. Diana and Cassandra tampered with her heart medication—increasing doses in some pills, removing medication entirely from others. It made her condition rapidly deteriorate while making her seem paranoid and unstable when she insisted something was wrong with her medication."

"How do you know this?" Ethan asks, his voice hushed with horror.

"Cassandra told me herself," I reply, the memory still bitter after all these years. "The night everything fell apart, when I was disoriented and vulnerable from the drugs, she called to gloat about her victory. She admitted everything—how they'd eliminated my mother to secure Diana's position with my father, how they'd orchestrated my downfall to remove me as an obstacle to Cassandra taking over Morgan Group."

Ethan sinks back onto the sofa, visibly processing the magnitude of what I've revealed. "Have you told your father? The authorities?"

"I had no proof," I explain. "Just the drugged confession of a woman who had already successfully painted me as unstable and unreliable. Who would have believed me? Especially when Cassandra and Diana had already established the narrative that I was having paranoid delusions, just like my mother supposedly had before her death."

Understanding dawns in Ethan's eyes. "So you came back with a different approach. Build power and credibility as Olivia Knight, acquire pieces of Morgan Group legally, position yourself to expose them once you had the leverage and evidence to be believed."

"Yes," I confirm, relieved that he understands the logic behind my actions, even if he can't forgive the deception. "I needed to be untouchable before I made my move against them. I needed resources, connections, irrefutable evidence."

"And I provided all three," Ethan concludes, his voice neutral now, controlled again.

"You did," I acknowledge. "Though not in the way I initially expected."

Ethan is silent for a long moment, his gaze drifting to the folder Isabella left behind. "And what's in there? What did Isabella and the Pierces discover?"

"Probably evidence connecting me to my former identity," I reply. "Immigration records from Singapore showing Olivia Morgan entering the country five years ago, pregnant and alone. Medical records of Leo's birth. Perhaps financial trails showing how I built Ascendant Group from the remains of my personal fortune."

"Enough to expose you publicly," Ethan concludes. "To disrupt your revenge plan and potentially create legal complications regarding Leo's custody and our marriage."

"Yes," I agree. "Which is why I was going to tell you everything tonight, before Isabella arrived. Marcus informed me that Cassandra and Nathaniel were targeting Leo, possibly planning to challenge our custody arrangement by exposing my true identity and suggesting our marriage was fraudulent."

Ethan's expression hardens at the mention of threats to Leo. "They would use a child as leverage?"

"Cassandra has no moral boundaries," I say simply. "She killed my mother, destroyed my life, and has been living off the fruits of those crimes for five years. Targeting Leo would be entirely in character."

Ethan stands again, moving to the windows to stare out at the Manhattan skyline, his back to me as he processes everything I've revealed. The silence stretches between us, heavy with unspoken questions and uncertain futures.

"I understand if you can't forgive me," I say finally, unable to bear the silence any longer. "If you want to end our arrangement, I won't contest your right to be part of Leo's life. He adores you, and you're an amazing father. I would never use him as a weapon the way Cassandra and Nathaniel are planning to."

Ethan turns back to face me, his expression unreadable. "Do you know what hurts the most, Olivia? It's not that you had an agenda when we met. It's not even that you used me and Leo initially as part of your revenge plan. It's that you didn't trust me enough to tell me the truth once things changed between us. Once we became... whatever we are now."

The pain in his voice cuts deeper than anger would have. "I was afraid," I admit, the confession difficult but necessary. "Afraid that once you knew the whole truth, you'd see me differently. That the woman you were falling in love with would disappear, replaced by someone damaged and deceitful."

"You didn't give me the chance to make that decision for myself," Ethan points out. "You decided for both of us by maintaining the deception."

"You're right," I acknowledge. "And I'm sorry. More than I can express."

Ethan runs a hand through his hair, a rare gesture of frustration from a man usually so controlled. "I need time to process all of this. To figure out what it means for us, for Leo, for everything we've built together."

"I understand," I say, though the prospect of losing him—losing the family we've created—fills me with a dread I never anticipated when I set this plan in motion.

Ethan moves toward the hallway, then pauses. "One more question. The weekend in the Hamptons... was that part of your plan too? What happened between us there?"

"No," I reply immediately, needing him to believe this if nothing else. "That was real, Ethan. Completely real. I wasn't thinking about revenge or Morgan Group or anything except you and me and Leo. Being a family."

Something in his expression softens slightly at this. "I believe you," he says quietly. "At least about that."

It's a small concession, but it gives me hope—hope that despite the magnitude of my deception, there might still be a path forward for us.

"I'll sleep in the guest room tonight," Ethan says. "I need space to think."

As he walks away, leaving me alone with the untouched folder and the shattered remains of the trust we'd begun to build, I feel the full weight of my choices. The revenge that has driven me for five years suddenly seems hollow compared to what I stand to lose—Ethan's love, our family's unity, the future we might have had together.

For the first time since my return to New York, I find myself questioning whether justice for the past is worth sacrificing happiness in the present.