VICTORIA VANCE — THE LOST HEIRESS

I hadn’t heard the whole call, and I didn’t know exactly what Angelina was planning, but instinct told me this was no harmless prank.

The next morning, I sought out Dominic — the only person outside the family I felt I could trust to any degree — and told him what I had overheard, incomplete as it was.

Dominic listened, his face turning serious.

“Angelina did something similar to a friend of mine last year,” he said, his voice low.

“A mild sedative, not life-threatening, but enough to make the person lose control of their behavior — speaking incoherently, acting erratically in public. My friend spent an entire year rebuilding her reputation after that.”

“So you think she’ll target my drink?” I asked.

“Very likely,” Dominic answered.

“At large parties, drinks for honored guests are often prepared in advance on a separate tray, labeled with names. If she means to act, that will be the moment — before the tray is brought out to the main hall.”

That evening, the ball began at seven, with over three hundred guests from across Europe, crystal chandeliers blazing throughout the great hall of Ashbourne Hall.

I wore the navy gown, my hair pinned neatly, standing beside Eleanor and Edward to receive guests, while Julian and Angelina stood opposite.

The Ashbourne Hall great hall had never looked so magnificent that night, with crystal chandeliers hanging from a twelve-metre ceiling, an orchestra playing softly in the corner, and the scent of white lilies drifting through the air from hundreds of carefully arranged vases.

Guests arrived one after another — the Duke of Cavendish, the Italian Contessa di Rienzo, even the French ambassador and his wife — each carrying a curious, appraising gaze for me, the new heiress of House Vance.

I smiled, shook hands, conversed in three languages when needed, and felt the wary looks of many guests gradually give way to approval.

Angelina, standing not far off, arm looped through Julian’s, laughed and chatted animatedly with Beatrice and Constance, but I noticed her hand occasionally tightening around her small clutch bag, as if holding something important close.

Just as Dominic had predicted, around eight o’clock, as trays of champagne were being prepared for the VIP guests, I saw Angelina slip past the service area, her hand brushing a glass with a small name tag — mine — for exactly three seconds, fast enough that no one noticed, but slow enough for Dominic, standing not far away, to see clearly.

He moved in at once, signaled the waiter to pause, and deftly switched the positions of two glasses on the tray — the glass tagged “Victoria Vance” now stood beside the one tagged “Angelina Vance,” but their contents had been swapped.

When the waiter carried the tray out to the main hall, it was Angelina herself, chatting with a group of young aristocrats, who picked up the glass she believed was meant for me.

I watched from a distance, my heart pounding.

Fifteen minutes later, amid laughter and soft music, Angelina began to show strange symptoms.

Her voice grew shrill, her gestures erratic; she laughed loudly for no reason in the middle of a serious conversation with the French ambassador’s wife, then suddenly knocked her drink onto the ambassador’s own white gown.

“Oh my goodness,” a guest whispered.

“What’s wrong with her?”

Angelina staggered, spoke in disjointed fragments, laughing and crying within seconds of each other, before the astonished eyes of hundreds of guests and no small number of camera lenses from the high-society press invited to cover the event.

She collapsed to the floor, in the middle of the great hall, before the entire assembled European aristocracy.

Chaos erupted in an instant.

Medical staff were called immediately, taking Angelina to a private room for examination.

Guests murmured among themselves, some pulling out their phones to film the scene, while the society press scribbled notes without pause.

Edward went pale and rushed after his daughter into the inner room, while Eleanor stood frozen in the middle of the hall, trying to stay composed to reassure the guests.

Julian, in a fit of panic, whirled around to face me, his eyes full of fury.

“What did you do to her?” he demanded, stepping closer to me.

“What did you do to Angelina?”

“I didn’t do anything,” I answered, trying to keep my voice steady despite my racing heart.

“Don’t lie!” Julian shouted, and before I could react, he swung his hand and struck me hard across the face, the sound of the slap ringing out across the hall as it fell into stunned silence.

The entire room froze.

My cheek burned, stinging, but I did not cry, did not step back.

I stood straight, looking Julian directly in the eye, my voice trembling slightly with anger but not with weakness.

“You’ve just hit the wrong person, Julian,” I said.

“And tonight, you’ll find out why.”

I turned to one of the family’s security guards, whom I had quietly arranged beforehand — on Dominic’s advice — to record the manor’s entire security camera footage throughout the evening.

“Please play the footage from the drinks service area, at 7:45 this evening,” I said, my voice loud enough for the nearby guests to hear.

“Put it on the large screen in the main hall, right now.”

In the crowd, I saw Mrs. Hutchins, the housekeeper who had served House Vance for thirty years, standing frozen by a stone column, her hands clasped tightly, her eyes betraying unmistakable worry for both of us sisters.

Around me, the guests were still reeling from the slap that had just occurred, some whispering among themselves, others watching Eleanor closely to gauge her reaction.

The Countess of Cavendish, standing nearby, shook her head, saying loud enough for those around her to hear: “Whatever the reason, striking a young woman in the middle of a ball like this is simply unacceptable.”

There was a brief pause, then the large screen behind the ball’s stage — originally intended for the centennial family tribute video — lit up.

The footage showed clearly: Angelina, in her pale pink gown, furtively reaching toward a glass tagged “Victoria Vance,” dropping a clear liquid from a small vial hidden in her handbag, then walking away quickly, entirely unaware that Dominic had quietly observed and swapped the two glasses immediately after.

Murmurs spread through the great hall.

Eleanor stood frozen, her hand clenched into a fist at her side.

Julian turned to look at me, his face white, his hand still trembling from the slap.

“Victoria…” he said, his voice cracking.

“I’m… I’m sorry. I didn’t know…”

“That’s not what I need to hear right now,” I said, turning my back to him, facing the large screen where the video continued to play.

Because the footage was not yet over.

And what appeared next on the screen was about to shake the entire Vance dynasty to its core.

The footage, recorded by the security cameras installed around the upper garden weeks earlier — the same place where I had once overheard Angelina’s secret phone call — continued to play on the large screen, not by my own design, but because the manor’s automated storage system had linked together footage from the requested time frame.

The images showed an evening, roughly three weeks earlier, of Angelina standing among the climbing roses, on the phone with someone.

But this time, the audio had been fully recovered, playing clearly through the hall’s sound system.

“Mother, I’m so worried,” Angelina’s voice rang out, trembling, quite unlike her usual haughtiness.

“That girl has shown up, and he — Father — seems to be leaning more and more toward her side. If the truth comes out, our whole plan falls apart.”

Another woman’s voice came through from the other end of the line, cold and calculating.

“Calm down, Angelina. Your father promised he would protect us. As long as the share transfer is completed before that girl figures out what’s going on, we’ll have enough to leave this country and start a different life, no longer having to depend on the fake Vance name.”

“But if Eleanor finds out I’m not…” Angelina’s voice trailed off, choking.

“She will never find out,” the woman’s voice cut in, firm.

“Your father has kept this secret for twenty years. He won’t let it come out now, when both his political career and his honor depend on it.”

The great hall fell into absolute silence.

Eleanor stood motionless, her face white as paper, her eyes fixed on the screen as though she could not believe what she had just heard.

Edward, who had just returned from checking on Angelina, stood frozen in the doorway, his entire body rigid.

“Turn it off,” he said, his voice breaking, almost a shout.

“Turn it off now!”

But it was already too late.

Three hundred guests, along with dozens of society reporters, had heard every word clearly.

Eleanor turned slowly toward Edward, her voice shaking with an emotion I had never seen in her before — not sorrow, but a cold fury, held in check for years.

“Angelina isn’t your adopted daughter,” she said, each word grinding out between clenched teeth.

“Is she, Edward? She’s your own flesh and blood.”

Edward did not answer.

But his silence, in a hall packed with witnesses, was the clearest answer of all.