Chapter 1

The rain in New York always carries the scent of rusting iron railings, especially in Queens.

In my memory, the rainwater was gray, meandering down the mottled exterior walls of cheap apartments, flowing into the clogged sewers on both sides of the street, emitting a sour, putrid odor of garbage mixed with damp concrete. Maggie—my foster mother—would cook a pot of cheap tomato soup on rainy days like this, with a few slices of onion floating in it; she said it would drive away the chill.

But the Upper East Side of Manhattan is different.

The air here smells like freshly printed banknotes and over-chilled champagne. The rain falls on manicured hedges, on the pristine glass facades of private galleries, and on the umbrellas hurriedly opened by pedestrians in trench coats, carrying a sort of affected freshness.

I stood before the floor-to-ceiling windows of the penthouse suite in the Grayson Mansion, watching the traffic below pulsing like blood vessels. The lights of Fifth Avenue haloed on the wet streets, turning into a blurred sea of gold. The glass reflected my current appearance—a Chanel haute couture suit from the current season, a pale gray wool blend, the collar rimmed with tiny pearls. My hair was styled meticulously by a top stylist, swept back into a chignon that looked casual but was carefully engineered. Around my neck hung a diamond necklace, the main stone weighing ten carats, enough to buy Maggie's entire dilapidated apartment building in Queens.

I am Emily Grayson.

Three months ago, I was still an accounting graduate waking up early to walk just to save a few dollars on subway fare.

Then, everything changed.

A man claiming to be a private detective appeared at my apartment door and handed me a DNA test report.

Seventy-two hours later, a black Lincoln Navigator pulled up downstairs, and a uniformed chauffeur opened the door for me.

And then I was sitting in the living room of the Grayson Mansion, across from a middle-aged couple with exquisite faces and expensive clothes.

They said that twenty-four years ago, in the same private hospital, a nurse had switched the babies. I was the biological daughter of Richard and Anna Grayson.

They said, welcome home.

"Emily, stop spacing out over there."

The speaker was Anna, my biological mother.

She sat on a three-meter-long velvet sofa—custom-made Hermès dark blue—perfectly echoing the color of her silk robe. She held a Wedgwood bone china teacup, her pinky slightly raised, her posture as elegant as a wax figure devoid of body temperature. She looked to be in her early forties, every inch of her skin carefully maintained, every strand of hair dyed a perfect golden brown.

"Come here, let your father have a look at you."

Richard Grayson, the helmsman of the Grayson Group, was currently seated in the master armchair. The chair was a nineteenth-century antique, said to be from some European aristocrat's castle. He looked older than he did on the covers of business weeklies, but his gaze remained hawk-like—sharp, evaluating, carrying a coldness that seemed to put a price tag on everything.

I walked over, every step sinking into the thick pile of the Persian carpet.

"Not bad," Richard said without pleasantries, tossing a document onto the mahogany coffee table. It slid across the smooth surface and stopped in front of me. His voice was raspy, like sandpaper rubbing against wood. "Better than I imagined."

A slight clinking of porcelain came from the side.

That was Isabella.

She was wearing a pale pink lace dress, the hem layered like an overly delicate flower. She was curled up in a single sofa by the window, knees pulled to her chest.

I knew she was the fake heiress who had been switched, but having lived in the Grayson home for twenty-four years, she had long become an inseparable part of this family—no, she was the princess held in the palms of their hands.

And I was merely an intruder, twenty-four years late.

"Hello, big sister," Isabella spoke timidly, her voice sweet as if dipped in honey, yet her eyes scraped over me like hooks.

My brother, Alex, immediately held her hand with heartache. He sat on the arm of her sofa like a loyal guardian deity. Alex Grayson, twenty-eight, the nominal Vice President of the Grayson Group, and in reality, the Crown Prince. He inherited his father's large frame and his mother's refined features; combined, he should have been handsome and charming, but there was always a spoiled arrogance in his eyes.

When he turned to look at me, his gaze instantly went cold. "Bella is saying hello to you, and you say nothing? Since you're healthy, you should share some of the burden for the family. Dad has been worried sick about company matters lately. Since you're back, you should learn to shoulder the responsibilities of the Grayson name."

I lowered my eyelids to hide the mockery in my eyes.

Responsibility. What a pretty word.