CHAPTER 27:SECRETS UNEARTHED

The room was heavy with tension. Mei Xing leaned forward in her seat, her hands clenched tightly in her lap, eyes locked on the nurse—Lin Yu—who now held the key to the truth she had searched for all these years.

"The night you gave birth," Lin Yu began, her voice trembling, "there was a plan already in motion. Mei Li had bribed a doctor and arranged everything with precision. I was instructed to switch your baby boy with a stillborn child that had come in earlier that day. But I couldn't go through with it. So, I didn't switch the baby… I gave him to someone else."

Mei Xing's heart skipped. "Someone else? Who?"

"A woman… a midwife I trusted," Lin Yu said. "She was instructed to take the child far away and raise him safely, outside the city. I didn't trust Mei Li. I feared what she might do to the child if she kept him."

Mei Xing was stunned. This changed everything. "So Mei Li never even raised him?"

"No. She was told the baby had been placed in a private care facility under her name. She never knew I gave him to someone else."

Zhao Chen glanced at Mei Xing, equally shocked. "Do you know where the midwife is now?"

"She moved several times," Lin Yu said, "but the last I heard, she settled in a small town near Huaijin."

Without wasting another second, Mei Xing stood. "Then that's where we're going."

They left Shizhou immediately, hearts racing with anticipation and fear. On the long drive to Huaijin, Mei Xing stared out the window, her thoughts a storm of emotions. Her son was alive. He wasn't raised by the woman who betrayed her. But where was he now? Who had he become?

By the time they reached Huaijin, night had fallen. The town was quiet, its streets lined with simple homes and flickering lanterns. With the help of local records, they traced the midwife to a cottage on the outskirts of town.

When the woman—Madam Qiao—answered the door, her eyes widened as she saw Lin Yu standing beside Mei Xing. There was a flicker of recognition, followed by guilt.

"I knew this day would come," Madam Qiao said softly. "You've come for the boy."

Mei Xing stepped forward, her voice shaking. "Please… is he here?"

"No," Madam Qiao replied. "But I raised him like my own for the first eight years of his life. I called him Jin Hao. He's… he's a brilliant child. But three years ago, he was taken from me by a man claiming to be a relative—he had forged documents and everything. I couldn't stop him."

The news hit Mei Xing like a punch to the chest. Her son had been found… only to be taken again.

"Do you know who took him?" Zhao Chen asked urgently.

Madam Qiao hesitated. "He said his name was… Zhang Wei."