Chapter 1

The day the Frederick family finally brought me home, I was already the youngest neurosurgeon in the country.

For twenty-three years, they hadn't even bothered to leave me a childhood engagement to my name.

It wasn't until I stepped through the gates of the Frederick estate that I learned the truth: the arranged marriage I was supposed to inherit had been set with the Riley family's eldest grandson—Brice Riley.

But the girl they had raised in my place for twenty-three years had gotten there first.

Before I ever came back, the "fake heiress" had already married into the Riley family.

*****

It had been a twelve-hour intracranial aneurysm clipping. The patient was a seventy-three-year-old retired professor, and the aneurysm was wedged at the fork of the middle cerebral artery—a dangerous spot.

One wrong move and it could rupture on the operating table.

I took off my gloves, my fingertips still a bit numb.

The nurse handed me my phone, and there was an unread message on the screen from the Northcrest Stanton Hospital Medical Identification Center.

I tapped it open.

As the page loaded, I didn't feel much of anything.

That was twenty-three years ago.

I'd known since I was little that I wasn't my adoptive parents' real child.

People in our small town loved to gossip, and when I was three, a neighbor even said right in front of me, "She was just picked up."

My adoptive parents were good people. They ran a small clinic, and while we didn't have much, they made sure I could go to school and even medical school. They never let me go without.

But they died young.

My adoptive father died of stomach cancer five years ago, and my adoptive mother passed away the year after.

Right before she died, my adoptive mother held my hand and said, "Victoria, your real parents are from Northcrest. Someone switched you when you were born. It wasn't that they ever abandoned you."

She pressed a yellowed slip of paper into my hand, with an address and a name written on it—the Frederick family.

I never went looking for them.

It wasn't out of resentment. I just didn't see the point.

By then, I was already the youngest attending physician at Greystone Hospital.

I'd handled over a hundred tricky neurosurgeries, and even got my papers published in The Journal of Clinical Medicine.

I didn't need a last name to prove my worth.

But three months ago, a guy from the Frederick family showed up at my hospital, saying he was their representative.

He said the Frederick family had been searching for me for twenty-three years and they wanted me to come home.

He said they owed me more than they could ever repay.

I was reviewing a CT scan of a massive meningioma at the time, circling it on the film with my pen without even looking up. I said, "Let's do a DNA test."

Now the results were in.

It was 99.99% match.

Turned out, I really was the Frederick family's heair.

I was the third child in the Frederick family, with two older brothers—Charlie Frederick and Jackson Frederick.

I turned off my phone, hung my white coat back in the hospital locker room, and changed into my own clothes—a faded gray hoodie, jeans, and canvas shoes.

The person staring back at me in the mirror looked as ordinary as could be.

I didn't wear makeup and had my hair pulled back in a neat ponytail. The only thing that stood out were my eyes. My adoptive mother used to say they were bright, like they hid a scalpel inside.

As I walked out of the hospital, a black Maybach was parked by the curb.

The door swung open, and the representative stood by the car, giving a respectful bow. "Miss Frederick, Mr. Frederick would like to see you."

I paused and looked at the car for a couple seconds.

I nodded.

After I got in, the representative handed me a file envelope. "Miss Frederick, here's some info about the family. Feel free to check it out on the ride."

I opened it up.

The first page contained information about the Frederick family.

The Frederick family was one of the four major families in Northcrest, with businesses spanning real estate, pharmaceuticals, and finance.

Dominick Frederick, the patriarch, was seventy-eight and still in good health. He had one son—my biological father, Vance Frederick, who currently served as chairman of the Frederick Group.

Vance had three children: Charlie, Jackson, and... the third daughter, who was supposed to be me.

I flipped to the second page, my hand pausing for a moment.

It read, "Shannon Frederick (adopted daughter), raised by the Frederick family since childhood. She is now married to Brice, the Riley family's eldest grandson."

There was a photo clipped to the page.

In the picture, a woman in a white wedding dress—her makeup flawless, her smile poised—was holding onto the arm of a tall man, standing together at a lavish wedding venue covered in flowers.

I stared at it for a few seconds.

The representative spoke from the front seat, his tone cautious. "Miss Frederick, Shannon was the child who got switched at birth.

"For twenty-three years, she lived as the Frederick family's daughter. It wasn't until three months ago, after the DNA test, that we realized she isn't actually a Frederick by blood."

I slipped the photo back into the file envelope.

"Who's the man in the photo?" I asked, pointing at him.

The representative paused. "Brice, the Riley family's eldest grandson. Back then, the Frederick and Riley families had arranged a childhood engagement. Originally, that marriage was supposed to be yours."

The scenery outside the window sped by.

I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes.

It had been twenty-three years.