PART 1

My family forced me to wear an old, faded dress to a grand party, thinking it would make me look poor and invisible. They believed it was only a rag wrapped around me. But when the billionaire hostess saw it, she pulled at the hidden seam—and the golden embroidery inside shocked the entire mansion.

My name is Maya. I was twenty-two years old and had lived most of my life under Doña Carmela and her daughter, Isabella. They adopted me from an orphanage when I was five, not to love me, but to use me as a servant.

For years, I cooked, cleaned, and obeyed them because I had nowhere else to go.

Recently, all of Philippine high society had been talking about Madame Victoria Imperial, the powerful billionaire founder of Imperial Global. She was searching for her missing child, who had disappeared twenty-two years ago.

Doña Carmela saw a chance to become rich. With fake papers and bribed orphanage officials, she convinced Madame Victoria that Isabella was the lost heir.

That night, Isabella’s “Welcome Home Gala” was held at the Imperial mansion.

“Maya! Where are my shoes?” Isabella screamed while wearing a gown worth millions.

Then she deliberately spilled coffee on my uniform.

I gasped. “Isabella, this is the only thing I have to wear.”

Doña Carmela laughed. “Good. Go find something in the storage room. Even rags are fine. No one cares what a servant wears.”

Crying, I climbed to the dusty storage room. Inside an old box from the orphanage, I found a faded white dress—the same dress I had been wrapped in as a child.

With no other choice, I wore it.