Chapter 1 — The Switched Heiress: The Battle for Wealth

Eighteen years ago, the summer in Saigon was so hot that it felt like the whole city was breathing out thick waves of humidity. Hong Phuc Obstetrics Hospital was located in the heart of District One, with light cream-colored walls and shiny marble hallways. It was the place where the city's most well-off families chose to welcome their first child. Chuong Bich Van lay on the hospital bed, the bed sheet still smelled of new fabric, and the light outside the window shone into the room with pale yellow streaks of city street lit at night.

She was twenty-four years old, had just given birth to her first daughter six hours earlier, her body was still exhausted but her heart was filled with a strange emotion she had never experienced before - a thick, heavy happiness, mixed with the vague fear of a first-time mother. The baby lay in a glass crib next to the bed, his face was red, his eyes closed, his tiny fingers curled as if holding something invisible. On the baby's wrist there was a small pink plastic bracelet, printed with the words: "Chuong Bich Van - Daughter - August 7."

Ton Hoai Nam, her husband, stood next to the window, holding the phone in his hand but not taking his eyes off the screen, occasionally glancing towards the glass crib with an unpredictable smile. The nightlight slanted onto one side of his face, highlighting a small, faint scar near his left temple - a trace from a car accident during his student days that he rarely mentioned, to the point that sometimes Bich Van himself even forgot it was still there. He was the son-in-law of the Chuong family, who had been married to Bich Van for three years. During those three years, he worked hard at his father-in-law's corporation, from the position of assistant until being assigned to be in charge of a small business. Everyone praised him for being talented, hard-working, and reasonable. Bich Van used to think she was lucky to have such a husband.

"I have to go down to meet a few people, I have urgent business with my partner," Hoai Nam said, leaning down to kiss his wife lightly on the forehead. "You should rest, call the nurse if there's anything."

"What's so urgent at this hour?" Bich Van asked, her voice still weak from fatigue.

"It's just business, nothing to worry about," he replied, then left the room, walking quickly and decisively like someone with a clear plan in mind, not like a father who had just held his child for the first time.

Bich Van didn't think much about it. She turned to look at her daughter, reached out and gently touched the tiny hand through the gap in the glass cradle, feeling the delicate warmth transmitted through her fingertips. In the next room, across a thin wall, Sai Diem Thu also gave birth a few hours ago.

Diem Thu was Bich Van's best friend since college. The two of them studied in the same Business Administration class at a large university in the city. They were so close that they once vowed to be "in-laws" if they had children of the same gender in the future. But their lives took two completely different directions after graduating. Bich Van returned to take over part of the family's business, and Diem Thu got married - a man who opened a small construction company, initially doing well but only a few years later fell deeply into debt because of the wrong investment in a real estate project. When Diem Thu was pregnant, her family was facing a debt of more than five billion dong, creditors kept calling to threaten, her husband was drunk all day and shied away from responsibility.

Knowing that her best friend was about to give birth at the same hospital, Bich Van proactively arranged for the two of them to sleep in a room close to each other, and even secretly asked someone to pay part of Diem Thu's hospital fees without letting her know, fearing that she would be offended. That was Bich Van's nature - generous, thoughtful, always putting feelings above all calculations.

That evening, after Hoai Nam left, Bich Van fell asleep for a while due to exhaustion. When I woke up, the clock on the wall showed eleven o'clock at night. Thirst made her awake. She reached for the glass of water on the table but discovered it was empty. She intended to ring the bell to call the nurse, but then thought better, got out of bed, put on a thin robe, and planned to go into the hallway to find a bottle of filtered water near the duty area.

The hospital hallway was eerily quiet late at night, with only the hum of the air conditioner and cold white fluorescent lights covering the empty walls. Bich Van walked slowly, one hand supporting her stomach, which was still in dull pain after the birth, her eyes looking for a bottle of filtered water placed near the on-duty nurse's area.

Passing by the newborn room — the large glass room where babies were brought in for night health monitoring, separated from their mothers for several hours according to hospital regulations — she accidentally glanced inside. The light in the room was softer than outside, with only a pale yellow nightlight illuminating the small cradles arranged in neat rows. A figure was standing and bending down inside, his appearance was so familiar that Bich Van's heart skipped a beat.

That's Diem Thu.

Bich Van was about to knock on the glass door, about to smile and wave to her friend - they were both on their first night as mothers, so meeting each other at this time was not strange. But there was something in Diem Thu's posture that made her pause. Diem Thu was not holding her child, not looking at the child with affectionate eyes like a new mother usually did. She was leaning over a cradle, her hands manipulating something very quickly, very quietly, her eyes constantly looking back towards the door as if she were watching.

Bich Van stood silently behind the foggy glass door, her hands involuntarily tightening her coat, her heart beating faster than her breathing even though she couldn't name the reason. She looked around, seeing no nurses on duty nearby — perhaps they were busy with something else at the other end of the hallway. The hallway light on the side where she stood was quite dark, enough for her shadow to blend into the wall shadow, without being detected by Diem Thu.

There was a soft noise from inside — a small metallic sound, like the clasp of a plastic bracelet being clicked shut. Then Diem Thu stood up straight, sighed with relief as if she had just completed an important task, stroked her hair with her hand, and her tense expression gradually relaxed.

Bich Van did not have time to see clearly what Diem Thu did to the child, nor did she have time to react any further, because at that moment the sound of a nurse's footsteps rang out from the end of the hallway, approaching the newborn's room. Bich Van reflexively stepped back, crouching in a nearby corner, her heart beating rapidly not because of fatigue but because of an unformed worry clearly coiling in her chest.

Diem Thu walked out of the newborn's room just as the nurse arrived. The two exchanged a few short sentences - Diem Thu said she only stopped by to look at her baby because she couldn't sleep. The nurse nodded sympathetically and advised her to go back to the room to rest. Diem Thu nodded, turned and walked towards her hospital room, her gait somewhat more hurried than usual.

Bich Van stood in the dark corner for a while longer after Diem Thu's figure had completely disappeared, her mind filled with hundreds of thoughts. Maybe I'm thinking too much, she told herself. Diem Thu was just a mother who could't sleep, worried about her child like any other mother on the first night away from her child. What had to be so serious?

But Diem Thu's alert eyes looking out at the door last time, that soft metallic sound, and especially the way she breathed a sigh of relief as if she had been relieved of a burden when she completed something - all kept lingering in Bich Van's mind, refusing to disappear.

She walked closer to the glass door of the newborn's room, looking inside through the frosted glass. The cradles were still arranged neatly as before, the children were still sleeping peacefully, there was no disturbance visible to the naked eye. She tried to find the crib with a sign with her daughter's name on it, but standing from this angle, the low light and distance made it impossible for her to clearly read the small letters on the signs.

Another nurse passed by, saw Bich Van standing hesitantly in front of the baby's room door, and immediately asked her if she needed any help. Bich Van was about to ask about her daughter, about to ask if anything unusual happened in the baby's room tonight, but then she held back, just smiled and shook her head, said she was just going to get water and then returned to her room.

That night, Bich Van couldn't sleep. She lay on the bed, listening to every little noise coming from the next room, where Diem Thu was, trying to determine if there was anything unusual or not. But everything was silent, only the steady hum of the air conditioner and the occasional sound of the nurse's footsteps echoing in the hallway.

She looked at her daughter sleeping peacefully in the glass crib next to the bed — the baby had been brought back to her mother's room after night monitoring — her small face strangely peaceful, completely unaware of the disturbances that might have occurred just a few hours before in the room not far away. Bich Van gently stroked her child's cheek, feeling the skin as soft as silk, and a vague but persistent fear clung to her mind, unable to dispel it.

She told herself that she was overthinking things, that being a first-time mother made people easily become paranoid and worry too much about things that weren't real. But there was a part of her — a mother's deepest instinct — that kept whispering that something was wrong tonight, something that would affect the rest of her life and the baby sleeping peacefully before her.

Outside the window, the city was still awake, the lights from distant buildings sparkling like thousands of sleepless eyes, watching every secret that was silently forming in the darkness. Bich Van closed her eyes, trying to fall asleep, but that uneasy premonition was still there, like a seed that had just been sown, waiting for the day to sprout into reality.

Little did she know that, just a few hours later, when the dawn had not yet dawned on the sky of Saigon, she would witness with her own eyes what she never dared to imagine - a betrayal from her closest friend, a secret that would haunt her for the next eighteen years, silently shaping the lives of three people who were still too young to understand what was happening to their own fate.