They Made Me Cook In An Apron While They Ate Like Royalty, But When The Billionaire CEO Entered And Kissed My Hand Calling Me His Fiancée, Their World Shattered!

The moment those words left Julian’s lips, my mother let out a strangled gasp, collapsing back into her dining chair with her hand pressed over her chest. My father looked as if all the blood in his body had been replaced with ice.

"Julian... Mr. Mercer, please!" Thomas pleaded, his voice cracking with sheer panic. "You can't do this! If Mercer Holdings pulls out, the banks will foreclose on our warehouses by the end of the quarter! We have three hundred employees! We have debts to suppliers!"

"Then you should have thought about that before treating your daughter like a servant," Julian replied without an ounce of pity.

He wrapped his arm securely around my waist and began guiding me toward the front foyer. But my sister, Natalie, was not about to let fifty million dollars—and her lavish lifestyle—walk out the front door without a fight.

Natalie hurried into the foyer, her diamond earrings swinging wildly as she blocked the path to the front door. Her eyes darted from Julian’s perfectly tailored suit to my worn sneakers and faded jeans. A bitter, venomous smile crept onto her face.

"Wait just a minute," Natalie said, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness and concealed malice. "Mr. Mercer, you are an intelligent, powerful man. How can you let Claire manipulate you like this? Do you even know who you're dealing with?"

Julian stopped. He looked down at Natalie as if she were an insect crawling across a marble floor. "Enlighten me, Natalie."

"Claire is a liar and a thief!" Natalie declared loudly, glancing back at our parents to back her up. "Seven years ago, she stole fifty thousand dollars directly from our father’s company accounts. She drained the firm during a critical audit! We kept her out of prison out of the goodness of our hearts! She has been a disgraced failure ever since. Whatever sob story she told you to get that ring on her finger is a complete fabrication!"

Silence fell over the foyer. My father looked away, unable to meet my eyes, while Ryan smirked behind his glass of bourbon, confident that his past had successfully resurfaced to destroy me.

I felt a brief pang of old trauma tighten my chest, but before I could defend myself, Julian let out a low, dry chuckle.

"Is that the fairy tale you've all been telling yourselves for seven years?" Julian asked, his voice dripping with icy contempt.

Natalie blinked, caught off guard. "It's not a fairy tale! It's the truth!"

Julian took a step forward, his towering frame casting a shadow over my sister. "Six months ago, when Thomas first approached my firm for an acquisition, my corporate intelligence team conducted a full forensic audit of Bennett Logistics over the last decade. Do you really think Mercer Holdings invests fifty million dollars without looking into every single penny that has passed through your family's books?"

Ryan’s smirk instantly vanished. The color drained from his face.

"We uncovered the fifty-thousand-dollar discrepancy from seven years ago," Julian continued, his eyes locking onto Ryan like a hawk targeting its prey. "We traced the IP address of the wire transfer directly to Ryan’s personal laptop, routed through an offshore sports betting platform in Curacao. We even found the text messages where Margaret begged Thomas to force Claire to sign the confession because Ryan was already on academic probation and couldn't risk a criminal record."

My mother choked back a sob, burying her face in her hands. Thomas stood frozen, his eyes wide with absolute horror.

"Claire didn't steal a single cent," Julian said, his voice ringing with absolute certainty. "She sacrificed her college education, her reputation, and her youth to protect a coward who wasn't man enough to own up to his own gambling addiction. And you rewarded her sacrifice with seven years of emotional abuse."