"Flesh and blood? Oh please. You ran off to find your real mom. What, she didn't give her precious daughter an allowance?"
The mention of her birth mother made Hazel freeze. That flash of shame on her face? Not because I'd exposed her but because her precious "real mom" had kicked her to the curb.
Here's the kicker. When she first followed Vincent to Ravenshire, she'd stumbled upon her birth mother Julia Bennett—now some big-shot media CEO. Thinking she'd struck gold, Hazel bled me dry, taking every cent and even selling our house to invest in her mummy's business.
But Julia treated them like dirt and stuck them doing grunt work for slave wages while pocketing all the profits. Watching her mother rake in fortunes while she slaved for pocket change, Hazel grew bitter. She started mutteri
