?Chapter 16:


    Jeff realized toote that he hadn’t stepped out before taking the call.


    As he stood up, his assistant’s announcement filled the quiet room—it was already toote to leave unnoticed.


    “The result shows that Katelyn isn’t your biological daughter, Mr. Bailey.”


    Thus, not only Jeff, but also Katelyn and Sharon, heard the revtion loud and clear.


    Color drained from Katelyn’s face as shock took hold.


    Unable to contain her emotions any longer, Sharon seized Jeff’s arm and demanded sharply, “Repeat what your assistant just said!”


    Katelyn looked on, shocked and unable to process the words.


    “Dad, please tell me,” she urged softly.


    Jeff couldn’t bring himself to meet Katelyn’s gaze, overwhelmed by the magnitude of their mistake.


    He and Sharon had invested so much love and effort into raising Katelyn, only to discover she wasn’t really their daughter—a reality too painful for anyone to easily ept.


    Despite having found Lise, their real daughter, the news was still a devastating blow.


    Jeff inhaled deeply, seekingposure, and then affirmed with heavy certainty, “The results are conclusive. You are our biological daughter.”


    Katelyn’s hope shattered, visible in her tightening eyes. Jeff’s deration struck her like lightning—unexpected and harsh.


    Tears welled up in Sharon’s eyes as she looked at Katelyn, not with affection but with bitterness.


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    “I struck my own daughter, all for a stranger. The energy spent raising someone I thought was my own…” Sharon’s voice wasden with betrayal and hurt. Her words, sharp and unforgiving, pierced Katelyn deeply.


    In a fit of anger, Sharon swept Katelyn’s unfinished meal from the table to the floor, creating chaos in the room.


    “My heart breaks thinking of the suffering my true daughter endured. How could I have been so blind?” Sharon cried out, her grief palpable.


    She copsed onto the sofa, her body wracked with sobs, her face etched with anguish.


    Despite her pain, her words still implied that Katelyn was the whole reason their real daughter had suffered.


    Jeff’s face was flushed with anger as he admitted, “It was our mistake. We didn’t recognize her.”


    In their eyesy unmistakable frustration.


    Katelyn grasped the gravity of the situation as pain snapped her back to reality.


    She thought such twists only happened in soap operas or novels. “This can’t be real,” she mused, finding the scenario absurd.


    Taking a deep breath, Katelyn asserted, “This must be wrong. How can I not be your daughter?”


    Sharon jumped up, approached Katelyn aggressively, and jabbed a finger towards her.


    “Are you still lying? Should I smash this report in your face? I took the sample myself. It has to be urate.”


    The warmth Sharon once showed had vanished, reced by hostility. Katelyn felt a surge of pain but was momentarily speechless.


    Jeff approached Sharon, gently touching her arm to soothe her. He looked at Katelyn with a mix of sorrow and disappointment.


    “We raised you with love, never expecting this. I know this is hard, but try to see things from our perspective.”


    Sharon crumbled under the weight of her emotions, covering her face as she wept.


    “This is all my fault. I failed to recognize my own child and wronged her instead.”


    She directed all her me toward Katelyn.


    “If things had been different, perhaps Neil’s actual wife, living a prosperous life, would have been our true daughter. A cruel irony.” Sharon’s gaze toward Katelyn was filled with raw bitterness, almost piercing.


    Katelyn, piecing things together, sensed that the Baileys might already know who their real daughter was.


    With her heart pounding and fists clenched, Katelyn’s voice shook as she asked, “Who—who is your biological daughter?”


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