Chapter 1

When my son, Tyler Evans, was five, I found out he was allergic to mangoes.

Then my husband, Clark Evans, and his mistress's secret were completely shattered before my eyes.

They swapped my life with someone else's, forcing me to raise another woman's child for five years, while my own flesh and blood was abandoned in an orphanage to survive on his own.

I laughed.

From that day on, I became the most devoted mother in town.

I spoiled my fake son rotten. If he wanted a gaming console, I got him the priciest one. If he got into a fight, I cheered him on for being brave.

If he hated school, I threw money at the place until they let him into the elite academy.

Everyone praised me for loving Tyler more than life itself, but only I knew I was waiting for him to fall apart from the inside.

*****

At Tyler's fifth birthday party, a small piece of mango mousse cake almost cost him his life.

I was busy greeting guests when I suddenly heard my mother-in-law scream. I turned around and saw Tyler lying on the floor, his face turning purple, letting out a terrifying wheezing sound, his body covered in red welts.

As the ambulance roared up, I held Tyler's swollen little hand, my mind completely blank.

Outside the emergency room, the doctor took off his mask. "It's a severe allergic reaction. Mango allergy. Didn't you know your child was allergic to mangoes?"

I was utterly confused.

Clark and I could both eat mangoes. The Evans family had no history of food allergies.

The doctor gave us a strange look. "Allergies often run in families, but sometimes they happen without any family history. Could be a genetic mutation."

Clark looked extremely embarrassed and quickly insisted, "It must be a genetic mutation."

That night, Tyler was out of danger and fell into a deep sleep in the hospital room.

I sat by his bedside, staring at his face, which looked a lot like Clark's. A chilling thought suddenly struck me.

Mango allergies were a dominant trait. If neither parent had it, there was almost no way the kid would end up allergic. Unless...

All those little details I'd brushed aside before suddenly flooded my mind, overwhelming me.

The shape of Tyler's toes was nothing like Clark's. Clark's second toe was longer than the rest, but Tyler's were almost all the same length.

Tyler's blood type was O, while both Clark and I were type A. The doctor said it wasn't impossible, but honestly, the odds were next to nothing.

My hands started to shake.

The next day, I pretended Tyler needed a follow-up at the hospital and secretly took a cheek swab from him. I sent it off with some of my hair to a top DNA testing lab in the neighboring town, anonymously.

For those three days while I waited for the results, I acted like nothing was wrong, taking care of Tyler and dealing with Clark, gentler and more attentive than before.

But every night, as I watched Tyler sleeping beside me, that cold suspicion gnawed at my heart.

On the fourth day, the results arrived. I locked myself in the study, tore open the envelope, and flipped straight to the last page.

It read: [Olivia Rollins is excluded as Tyler Evans's real mother.]

Those words on the page felt like a red-hot iron rod, driven straight into my eyes, my brain, my heart.

The world went silent, weightless, and cold.

I slumped into the chair, clutching the paper so tightly that my knuckles turned white and cracked. No tears, no screams, just a suffocating, hollow roar echoing inside my skull.

Tyler wasn't my son.

For five years, I gave him all the love a mother could give.

My back ached from midnight feedings. I stayed awake through his every cough, my heart broke when he stumbled learning to walk, and I shed tears of joy the first time he called me "Mom."

All my devotion, all my love, all my dreams. I poured them into a child who had no blood ties to me.

And my real son? Where was he? Was he still alive? Did Clark know? Was he part of this?

I remembered Clark's awkward face when he tried to brush it off as some gene mutation. This wasn't some fantasy story. There was no way a mutation like that could pop up out of nowhere.

So, he knew all along.

And that woman who gave birth to this child, who handed him over to me and robbed me of my life. Who was she? Was she hiding somewhere in the shadows right now, laughing at how clueless I was?

I had no idea how long I'd been sitting there. Daylight outside faded away.

I slowly got up and walked over to the mirror.

The woman staring back at me was ghostly pale, with dark circles under her eyes and lips cracked from dryness.

But her eyes, those eyes that used to be full of warmth and exhaustion, now burned with a cold, steely light, sharp and venomous.

I slowly forced my lips into a smile at the woman in the mirror. I smiled.

Fine. perfect. They wanted to swap my life with someone else's and make me raise another woman's bastard?

Alright then. I'd raise this son myself. Oh, I'd make sure to raise him well.

I'd spoil him rotten and totally ruin him.