“She said if I didn’t take the money and disappear, she’d use them to have me committed the moment the twins were born. And that you’d be told the babies died during delivery.”

The words landed heavier than any betrayal I’d ever survived in a boardroom. My mother hadn’t only separated us. She’d been prepared to erase my children’s existence before they drew a first breath.

“She told me you agreed to it,” Maren added, barely a whisper. “She showed me a letter with your signature. Said you couldn’t afford the scandal.”

I came forward and framed her face in my hands, thumbs wiping the tears off her cheeks.

“I never signed anything. I wrote you every day for a year. I nearly killed myself trying to find where you’d gone.”

She searched my face, and then the walls she’d spent twenty years building finally cracked.