The dark carriage window slowly lowered.

A gloved hand pushed back the velvet curtain, revealing a man sitting in the deep shadows. A heavy silver silk mask covered the left side of his face, concealing jagged scars that ran from his temple down to his collar. Yet his right eye—piercing, slate-gray, and brimming with unspilled tears—fixed directly on Evelyn.

“Alexander…?” Evelyn whispered, clutching the faded pH๏τograph against her chest. “Who stole me? What are you talking about?”

“Get in, Evelyn,” Alexander said, his voice a rich, low baritone that vibrated with suppressed rage. “Before the telegraph reaches Boston.”

Daniel helped a stunned Evelyn and the little girl, Lily, into the plush leather carriage. The moment the door clicked shut, the carriage surged forward toward the jagged mountains of the Montgomery estate.

Inside, Alexander did not hide his gaze. He looked at Evelyn’s calloused hands, her simple travel dress, and the flour-dusted posture she hadn’t managed to shake.

“Your sisters thought they were playing a cruel trick by mailing a picture of you exhausted and covered in kitchen dust,” Alexander murmured, leaning forward. “They didn’t know that the birthmark on your left wrist—the small crescent moon—was visible in that pH๏τograph.”

Evelyn instinctively pulled her cuff down, staring at the faint brown mark she had carried since infancy. “My mother always told me it was a blemish. A flaw.”

“The woman you call your mother is Eleanor Bennett,” Alexander said coldly. “And she is not your mother. She was your late father’s second wife.”

Evelyn felt the breath leave her lungs. “My… my mother died when I was born.”

“No,” Alexander said firmly. “Your true mother was Katherine Vance, the sole heiress to the Vance Rail and Timber Empire—the largest fortune in the western territories. Twenty years ago, Eleanor was Katherine’s nurse. When Katherine fell ill after giving birth to you, Eleanor and her family forged the adoption papers, hid Katherine away in an asylum, and took you to Boston to live off the child support trust.”

Lily reached over, small fingers gently wrapping around Evelyn’s hand. “Papa looked for you everywhere, Auntie Evelyn. He made a promise.”

“What promise?” Evelyn stammered, tears stinging her eyes.

“Katherine was my older sister,” Alexander admitted, his voice cracking with raw grief. “Before she died eleven years ago, she begged me to find her stolen child. Seven years ago, while hunting down the corrupt lawyers in Boston who sealed the fake papers, my carriage was ambushed and burned. That was the night I earned these scars—and the night I retreated into this valley to build an empire vast enough to crush the Bennett family once and for all.”

“Then the newspaper advertisement…” Evelyn gasped. “The marriage…”

“Was the only bait bold enough to lure you out of their clutches,” Alexander confessed. “Under your mother’s sealed trust, on your twenty-sixth birthday—which pᴀssed three weeks ago—you inherit eighty percent of the Vance estate, including the Bennett family’s ancestral home in Boston. The moment Eleanor realizes who you are, your life is in mortal danger. That’s why I sent for you.”

Before Evelyn could absorb the staggering weight of her true idenтιтy, the carriage suddenly lurched to a violent halt.

The horses whinnied in terror.

Daniel shouted from the driver’s bench outside: “Alexander! We’ve got trouble on the ridge!”

A deafening BANG echoed through the canyon, and a rifle ball ripped through the carriage roof, showering them with splinters.

Alexander instinctively threw his mᴀssive coat over Evelyn and Lily, pulling a heavy Colt revolver from his belt.

Through the front glᴀss, four riders on black horses blocked the narrow mountain pᴀss.

At the front rode a private Pinkerton detective in a dark duster, holding a legal warrant. But sitting behind him in an extravagant fur-trimmed riding cloak was none other than…

Victoria Bennett.

She held a smoking rifle in her gloved hands, her beautiful face twisted into an ugly, venomous sneer as she screamed over the wind: