Chapter 132: Carrying Years of Guilt

Watching the rare crack in Jude’s poker face, Chelsea took a slow breath across the table.

"Jude, I know having twenty years of your life flipped upside down in five seconds is a lot to take," she said softly. "Just sit down, breathe, and hear me out from the start. Once you know the history, everything will make sense."

Jude looked up from the photo into her eyes.

Everything in him rejected the idea that this glamorous girl was his mother’s sister, but he forced his racing pulse back down.

If there was a hidden Chapter in his mother’s past, he had to hear every word.

He sat slowly back down in the chair, placing the two photos on the table. "I’m listening. Talk."

Chelsea picked up the teapot, poured him a warm cup, and rested her hands in her lap.

"Here’s the truth," she said. "My name is Chelsea, and your mother’s name was Sharon. We grew up as sisters under the exact same roof... even though we don’t share a drop of blood. I was adopted and raised by your grandfather."

"I don’t have a grandfather," Jude said, his face deadpan. "Since the day my mom died, I haven’t had a single relative on this earth."

"On paper, maybe. But he’s alive and kicking," Chelsea said evenly. "My adoptive father is Richard Kensington, the head of the Kensington family in Beverly Hills. And he’s your mother’s real father."

She paused to let that sink in, then kept going. "I was the secret daughter of a powerful West Coast figure and a woman from an old-money family in London. My real dad couldn’t afford a scandal with his rivals, so he couldn’t let anyone know I existed. To keep me safe, he hid me away with the Kensingtons in Beverly Hills. That’s how I met your mother, and from day one, she was my real sister."

"And then?" Jude asked quietly, no longer arguing.

"Not long after that first photo on the terrace was taken, my dad’s enemies found out about me," Chelsea said, like she was reading someone else’s story. "To stop them from using me as leverage, he shipped me out of the country overnight to live with my mom’s family in London. I spent twenty years in the UK under strict orders never to touch American soil. Just a few months ago, after my real dad died and the beef blew over, I was finally allowed to come home."

Jude frowned slightly. "Even if that’s true, what does you being stuck in London have to do with me and my mom?"

For the first time, Chelsea’s eyes softened.

"Living in that Beverly Hills mansion, everyone treated me like an outsider," Chelsea said. "The uncles, the cousins... they all looked at me like a stray dog trying to steal their inheritance. Not one person was nice to me. Except your mom. Whenever the other kids tried to bully me, Sharon stood in front of me. She brushed my hair, shared her bedroom, and gave me the only real warmth I ever felt in that cold house."

She took a breath and went on. "Years later, your mom met your dad and fell head over heels. Old man Kensington lost his mind. The Kensingtons think they’re royalty, and he thought your dad was a nobody who wasn’t worthy of his daughter. When your grandfather tried to break them up, your mom picked love over the family billions. She walked out the front gates with your dad and cut ties with the Kensingtons forever."

Jude stared at her in silence.

Growing up, his mother had never said a single word about any of this...

"And the reason she told you she was an orphan," Chelsea added gently, "was because she never wanted you looking for the Kensingtons after she was gone."

"So I actually have family out West?" Jude muttered, still trying to wrap his head around it.

"By blood, yeah. But they aren’t family," Chelsea said bluntly. "Old man Kensington disowned your mom, so they definitely wouldn’t welcome you. If the rest of the family found out Sharon had a son, they’d just see you as a threat trying to steal their trust funds. Keeping you in the dark was her way of protecting you."

"Your mom was the only person who ever treated me like real family, and I never forgot it," Chelsea said. "By the time I heard she passed away, it was too late, and I wasn’t allowed to fly back. That guilt ate at me for years. The second I got back to the States and found out you were in New York, I wanted to make up for not being there for her. That’s why I tracked you down tonight and handed you the Heavens Club."

"Wait a second," Jude caught a hole in the story. "If my mom never talked about the Kensingtons, how did you know what I looked like? And why act like you knew me earlier?"

Without saying a word, Chelsea reached back into the folder and slid a third, smaller photo across the glass.

It was an old, faded picture of a young Chelsea, smiling ear to ear in a sunny garden, holding a tiny baby wrapped in blankets.

"That was taken at your one-month party," Chelsea smiled softly. "Your mom secretly mailed it to me right before I was shipped off to London."

Looking down at the baby in the photo, Jude felt a jolt shoot straight through him.

"Anyone can spin a good story, Chelsea," Jude said, looking back up. "How do I know any of this is real?"

"Do I really need to prove it after handing you a three-billion-dollar club and a billion-dollar cash pile for free?" Chelsea smirked, batting her eyelashes. "Then again, I know how paranoid you are. Go use your own spies tomorrow. With the kind of power you have, checking the link between your mom, the Kensingtons, and me shouldn’t take more than two days."

"Don’t worry, I’ll check every single word," Jude said evenly.