I Raised the Heir He Tried to Steal

Anyone watching would have read it exactly the way she wanted: furious that Cole Graves had secretly swapped the babies, and at the same time thrilled, overjoyed to discover her own son had turned out so remarkable.

That performance couldn't have been pulled off without rehearsing it a few hundred times.

"Cole, how could you be so foolish!"

"If you adored your nephew that much, you could have just been good to him and left it at that. How could you go and switch the children?"

"To me, whichever child I raised is my son. But how is a businesswoman like Samantha supposed to accept something like this?"

My mother-in-law, Moira Winters, was pinching her own thigh hard enough to keep from laughing out loud.

"What's done is done. Arguing over right and wrong now is pointless."

"If you ask me, this isn't even a bad thing. Samantha's boy has cerebral palsy, he can't inherit the company anyway. Clay is a clever child, so it's only fitting he takes it over."

"Yes, the fortune belongs to the Hensons, but the Hensons and the Graves are joined by marriage. We were always one family. No need to draw such sharp lines."

My parents were livid.

They struck Cole across the face, several times.

"Cole Graves, don't take us for fools."

"Spare us the wounded innocence. You switched those babies on purpose, and what you were after was the Henson family fortune."

"Otherwise, why would you say nothing all these years, and choose today of all days to speak up, the very day Clay inherits the company?"

Three:

Cole cupped his cheek.

Years of my parents' authority kept him from talking back, but the impatience still bled through his voice.

"Samantha, help me reason with your parents. You really can't misunderstand me like this."

"I only wanted to do a good thing. I meant to wait until you and Clay had grown close before telling you. But I never expected our own child to have cerebral palsy, and back then you were still in your confinement after giving birth. If I'd told you then, how could you possibly have accepted it?"

But now that it's out in the open.

It's not just my parents and I who can't accept it. My son and daughter-in-law can't either.

The two of them wore hard expressions, ignoring every word out of Cole's mouth, their faces full of open contempt for him.

That was something Cole hadn't anticipated.

All through Clay's childhood, he'd spoken well of Catherine Lawrence again and again in front of him. Every one of those kind words had been planted for this very day. Yet he'd never imagined Clay wouldn't buy a single one of them.

So his tone turned ugly.

"Clay, you may carry the Henson name, but the blood in your veins belongs to the Graves and the Lawrences."

"You can't turn into some ungrateful traitor just because the Hensons have more money."

"Don't forget, in all this, your birth mother and your adoptive mother are both victims. You're the one who came out ahead."

"The Hensons answer to you now. There's nothing stopping you from claiming both mothers, honoring both mothers. The way you honor them can differ, that's all. Nothing in this world runs deeper than blood."

The moment he finished.

Catherine Lawrence dropped to her knees before me as well.

"Samantha, to you Clay is nothing but a tool. But to me he's my own flesh and blood, my son."

"All these years I believed my son had cerebral palsy. I stayed by her side and endured that torment, but every bit of it was suffering I bore in your place. I don't blame you. I only beg you, give Clay back to me."

"As for the Henson company, you're free to take it back. Don't let Clay inherit it."

Four:

I let out one cold laugh after another.

Nothing that happened today surprised me in the least.

And Catherine saying all this didn't mean she truly wanted only her son and not the money.

She wasn't a fool.

Changing the head of a company isn't as simple as swapping out a table or a chair. Clay had been at the firm for years; I couldn't dismiss him with a sentence or two.

Even if I really did throw Clay out of the Henson family, it would gut the company.