Chapter 3
1911words
The putrid smell of Queens choked Serafina's throat. Anya's rented room was cramped and oppressive, the air permeated with cheap cleaning agents and lingering traces of death. Wearing gloves, she examined the pitiful few possessions left behind: several faded, well-worn clothes, a tattered poetry collection, and a worn-out diary. The landlady, a heavyset middle-aged woman, was greedily counting the cash Serafina's assistant had given her, while rambling on: "That girl was quiet, except sometimes she'd cry in the middle of the night. Lately she kept mumbling something about Paradise Tower, saying some very noble lady was going to help her..."
Noble lady. Serafina's heart sank. These words precisely targeted Cassandra Sterling and her husband Julian Thorne. Who else would be described that way by a girl from the bottom rungs of society? She discreetly slipped the diary into her handbag.
"She was a good child," a gaunt old woman poked her head out from next door, a glimmer of compassion in her cloudy eyes. "Such a pity. She always said she was about to find her mother."
Find her mother. How deep must the obsession with a mother be for an orphan who was adopted and then abandoned? Serafina could no longer stay there; every speck of dust in the room was filled with suffocating sadness. She turned and left, closing the door on the brief and painful life of that girl, along with the hypocritical compensation money.
Meanwhile, Maya was experiencing another form of torture at Vanguard Academy. Her talent here was not a pass, but rather a target that attracted attacks. Simply because she was an "outsider" who entered on a scholarship, she became the natural object of exclusion by the elite circle.
"Oh, look, it's the nightingale from Queens," Scarlett Thorne, Julian and Serafina's legal daughter, was blocking the practice room door with her followers, wearing that cold and arrogant smile inherited from her father. "I heard your mom nearly turned herself into a performance art piece just to get you in here?"
Celeste Shaw, who stood beside Scarlett, the mediocre daughter of Cassandra, covered her mouth and laughed exaggeratedly. They deliberately knocked over the sheet music in Maya's hands, watched the papers scatter across the floor, and then walked away in their delicate leather shoes, leaving Maya standing alone in the empty corridor.
When they returned home that evening, Serafina read everything Maya had endured during the day from her swollen eyes and silence. She had won her an admission ticket but failed to build her a fortress. And she could only watch helplessly as Maya was torn apart. At that moment, one thought occupied her mind with absolute clarity: she must enter their circle, enter that center of power known as Paradise Tower. Only by standing at the same height as them could she protect Elena's daughter.
Back in Paradise Tower, in Serafina's apartment overlooking all of Manhattan, everything was clean, expensive, and perfectly inhospitable. She locked herself in her walk-in closet, which displayed all the trappings required for her identity as Serafina Vanderbilt. From her handbag, she took out the paper box she had brought back from Anya's room, containing all of her "valuables"—several faded hairpins, a cheap lipstick, and... a small object carefully wrapped in velvet cloth.
She unwrapped the dirty velvet cloth, and a heart-shaped silver pendant slid into her palm. It looked rather old, its surface covered with tiny scratches, but that unique design, the tiny sapphire embedded in the center of the heart, and the barely recognizable iris flower engraving on the back... her breath instantly stopped.
Time seemed to freeze, the entire world collapsing into the cold metal in her palm. Serafina turned to stone. This pendant, she recognized it. Eighteen years ago, before her daughter—pronounced a "stillbirth" by doctors—was taken away, she had commissioned Harry Winston's chief craftsman to create this unique amulet for her. She had imagined countless times that it would hang around the neck of her healthy, beautiful daughter, not appear among the belongings of a deceased orphan girl.
Back then, Serafina had no idea that the bloodline secrets of the Vanderbilt family were far more complicated than she had imagined. Her mother, on her deathbed, had gripped her hand tightly and said with an almost pleading tone: "If one day you find yourself with nowhere to turn, go find Victoria. She's in Europe; she was a mistake your father made in his youth, but she shares the same blood as you. The Vanderbilt family never fights alone; someone always returns at the critical moment." Her mother's eyes were so lucid then, so serious, but Serafina thought it was just a story fabricated to make up for her father's mistakes, a lie to comfort herself. She never went looking for this so-called "Victoria," and never even believed she truly existed.
"No... impossible..." she murmured, her fingertips trembling violently, barely able to hold the tiny pendant. She frantically pried open the hidden clasp of the pendant, a design she had specifically requested years ago, where a miniature photo could be stored. But at this moment, in that tiny space, there was no photo, only a line of childish yet clear writing etched with a needle point: "Anya, for my lost star."
Anya. Her star.
Julian's face instantly appeared before Serafina's eyes, his unnaturally composed expression when he returned to her years ago with the frail "premature baby" Scarlett, his decisive tone when he told her "Serafina, forget about that unfortunate child, let's look forward," and his almost compensatory indulgence toward Scarlett all these years... All the details she had overlooked came crashing down like an avalanche in this moment, converging into a truth so cruel it was beyond comprehension.
Julian had switched their children. He replaced Serafina's healthy and beautiful daughter Anya with a sickly infant named Scarlett from who knows where, and abandoned her. And now, this daughter whom he had abandoned had ended her life in the most tragic way inside Paradise Tower that he had built with his own hands.
Serafina fell to her knees, overwhelmed by immense grief and anger. She couldn't make any sound, only clutching the pendant tightly, allowing its sharp edges to cut into her palm. Tears finally broke through the dam of pretense, mixing with the blood seeping from her palm, burning her skin. Anya... her daughter... it turned out she had already met her, and had even shed tears for her death at the last moment of her life, without knowing that she was her own flesh and blood.
In her tear-blurred vision, Serafina closed her eyes, and a scene that had never happened floated in her mind—
It was a spring afternoon, with cherry blossoms in full bloom at Central Park. She was holding the hand of a six-year-old girl, who had the same chestnut hair as hers, but deeper blue eyes, like her grandmother's eyes.
"Mom, look at that squirrel!" The little girl pointed at the tree, her voice as crisp as silver bells.
She knelt down and embraced her daughter, feeling her warm body temperature and sweet milk scent. "Would you like to feed it some bread crumbs?"
"Yes!" The girl nodded excitedly, taking the bread from her hand and carefully tearing it into small pieces.
Sunlight filtered through the cherry trees, bathing them in warmth. The girl turned to smile at her, her smile innocent and pure: "Mom, I love you so much."
"I love you too, baby." She kissed her daughter's forehead, "I'll love you forever."
——But none of this ever happened.
That six-year-old Anya was not feeding squirrels in Central Park, but in an orphanage in Brooklyn, wearing tattered clothes, eating the cheapest food, crying alone on countless nights.
The little girl who should have listened to her bedtime stories, cuddled in her arms, and blown out birthday candles—her Anya—was deprived of all the warmth and love that should have been hers.
And she, as a mother, couldn't give her daughter even a single hug or say "I love you" once.
Serafina opened her eyes, the tears on her face already cold. Those beautiful moments that never happened, those mother-daughter times cruelly taken away by Julian, every imagined scene was like a knife, mercilessly cutting into her heart.
But at this moment, grief was useless. There was only one thing left she could do for her daughter.
The flames of vengeance erupted in Serafina's heart, burning away all sorrow and weakness, leaving only ice-cold hatred. Julian Thorne, Cassandra Sterling, and everyone else in this tower, all those involved in her daughter's death—she wouldn't spare a single one of them.
The next day, Elena Vance received a call she wouldn't have dared dream of. A lawyer claiming to represent the Vanderbilt family trust fund informed her that an anonymous owner in Paradise Tower urgently needed to sell an apartment due to family circumstances, and Ms. Elena Vance, because of her daughter's outstanding talent at Vanguard Academy, had been selected as the exclusive designated buyer, able to purchase it at an "internal friendly price." That price, although nearly one-third of the market value, was still an astronomical figure that Elena would need to risk everything to barely scrape together.
Serafina stood by the floor-to-ceiling window of the apartment, watching as Elena and Maya drove through the gates of Paradise Tower in a worn-out Ford. She knew that for a single mother struggling in Queens, this was an irresistible bait. For her daughter's future, she would move in at any cost.
A few days later, Serafina "accidentally" ran into Elena who came to handle some procedures in the lobby. She was wearing an ill-fitting cheap suit, standing awkwardly in this magnificent golden palace.
"Ms. Vance, is it?" Serafina smiled as she approached her, her tone gentle and friendly. "I'm Serafina Vanderbilt. I've heard about your daughter, Maya is a very talented child."
Elena looked at her in surprise, her face filled with unexpected honor. She didn't know that the seemingly heaven-sent luck was actually a carefully orchestrated trap set by Serafina.
"Ms. Vander...bilt." She stammered in response, her eyes full of awe and a barely noticeable hint of caution.
"Don't be nervous," Serafina patted her arm. "Welcome to Paradise Tower. We'll be neighbors from now on, so if you need anything, feel free to come to me anytime. I'd be happy to be Maya's first friend here."
She watched as gratitude and trust gradually rose in Elena's eyes, feeling not a ripple of emotion in her heart. Elena Vance, you and your daughter will be the sharpest knife she plunges into the enemy's heart. You yearn to climb higher, and she will personally build the stairway to hell for you.
"Thank you," she said, too excited to speak coherently, "Really, thank you so much."
