Animal Whisperer: Take Back My Life and Love Chapter 309: The Hidden Guardian

"Your mother didn't even know who she was when she was blacklisted from that lab at Bellwood University. She spent years thinking she was the one who screwed up her own career."

Ingrid’s voice was thick with bitterness. "After that, Tammy was persona non grata. No one would hire her. She started spiraling and doubting her own sanity. It took her forever to realize that every setback and every closed door was orchestrated by that fraud and his people. By the time she figured it out, they were too powerful to touch. To keep you and your father safe, she... she had to disappear."

Simon sat in stunned silence while the weight of it crushed him. "So, swapping Nancy and Ginnie... that wasn't an accident."

He caught a massive hole in the logic and scowled. "But if Chandler is the imposter, his priority should be burying the truth, not digging it up. Why go through the trouble of swapping them just to take Ginnie back twenty-two years later?"

"What?!" Ingrid bolted upright and winced as her stitches pulled.

"That bastard... he actually swapped Tammy’s daughter?!"

Nancy quickly explained how she and Ginnie had been switched at birth and how Chandler had recently reclaimed Ginnie as his own.

"That is disgusting!"

Ingrid’s pale face flushed with pure rage.

"Tammy went through hell all those years, scraping by just to send money home every single month... and you’re telling me the girl she worked herself to the bone for was that liar’s daughter!"

Simon’s head snapped toward Ingrid.

His voice was barely a whisper. "You’re saying my mother was the one sending us money?"

Ingrid’s eyes filled with tears. "She couldn't come back for you, but she never stopped thinking about you. She worked at a factory all day and did freelance art and handiwork all night. She never slept. Every cent she made, she saved up and sent straight to you."

Ingrid took a shaky breath. "She was terrified that if the people watching her found out, they’d cut you off. So she had us send it through a charity. It was the only way to make sure it actually got to you without those people noticing."

The usually stoic Simon felt his vision blur as the tears finally hit.

"That explains it," he choked out. "I always wondered how we got so lucky with that anonymous donor. It started when we were kids, and by the time we hit college, it was enough to cover everything."

Nancy felt a wave of nausea.

It all clicked. There was no way a five-year-old boy could have raised a baby alone after their father died if their mother hadn't been guarding them from the shadows for twenty years.

And the irony was sickening. The girl Simon had sacrificed everything to raise, using their mother’s blood, sweat, and tears, was the daughter of the man who destroyed their lives.

Nancy felt like she’d swallowed glass.

She forced herself to think clearly. "Wait. The head of the Summers family died earlier this year."

The patriarch, Tammy’s real father.

The man Chandler called Dad.

Chandler might have lost the power struggle against Yvonne and moved to Townsville years ago, but he’d been leeching off the Summers name ever since.

"My mother was the real heir," Nancy said, her mind racing. "But now that the patriarch is dead, a DNA test is impossible. There’s no way to prove her identity, and the inheritance has already been carved up."

A cold realization washed over her. "Is that why Chandler took Ginnie back now? Because he’s gone and the evidence is buried? He kept me around as long as my vaccine research was useful, but the second I finished it, he tossed me aside to bring his real daughter home."

Simon’s expression turned lethal and his knuckles popped as he gripped the chair.

He had spent his life protecting the enemy’s daughter while his own sister was being bled dry.

Nancy’s voice dropped to a chill. "Simon, you were top of your class at the Police Academy. You had every award in the book, yet you got shipped off to a dead-end post in the middle of nowhere. That was Chandler too, wasn't it?"