Ezekiel studied my silence before speaking earnestly. "Dahlia, I heard about your adoptive mother, but you’re carrying the future of this family on your shoulders. The South District development project is about to be approved. If you walk away now, what if President Davis pulls out of the deal?"
"And Stephen is your child, too. Can you really bear to abandon him like this? You can’t be so selfish."
A slow smile curved my lips. "You forget, I was never a Cavendish to begin with. That name was something you forced upon me, and now I’m giving it back."
"Tessa is grown now. The burden I carried for seven years should finally shift to her. If she wants the benefits, then she should be willing to pay the price. Isn’t that how this works?"
Fury flashed in Ezekiel’s eyes before he struck me hard across the face. "A bastard like you has no conscience! I should’ve listened to Mom back then and left you to freeze to death in the snow. You ungrateful wretch!"
My birth mother was Erica Cavendish.
But my father? Just an unknown male model, selling his looks in a club.