After a Rich Woman’s Test, an Unknown Young Man Appeared in My Life, and His Mother Suddenly Turned Pale

That day, when the restaurant owner told me, “I’ll fire you for giving food to a beggar,” that old woman was still holding my lunch box in her hands.

It was five o’clock in the evening. On the street, the asphalt cracked by the rain smelled of oil and fried onions. An old woman was sitting by the back door, wearing a torn sandal on one foot, with a small, crumpled cloth bag on her knees.

“Are you still here?” my co-worker, Levan, asked me. “Amara, you yourself barely eat, and now you’re feeding her all day?”

“She has a name,” I answered.

The old woman raised her head.

“My name is Adora, child.”

That name meant nothing to me then.

I put the rice and chicken left on the tables into a warm container and sat down in front of her. My mother lay sick at home, and my brother was waiting for his tuition fee. This food was my only lunch, but I remembered my mother’s words: “Do not let poverty make you bitter.”

“It is all for you, Mother Adora,” I said.

“What will you eat?”

“I’ll think of something in the evening.”

She looked at me for a long time.

“If you have no money, why are you helping me?”

“Because you are hungry.”

“Only for that reason?”

“What other reason could there be?”

A strange attentiveness appeared in her eyes. Then I thought she was simply surprised. I did not understand that she was remembering every one of my words.

The next day she was there again. I brought her bread and water. But from the worn cloth bag she took out a thick envelope. The envelope fell from her hand, and money scattered across the street.

“This belongs to someone else,” I said immediately.

“There is no one here. Take it.”

“I need money too.”

“Then it is easier.”

“No. It still belongs to someone else.”

I collected the money and put it back into the envelope. She lowered her head, but for a moment the old woman’s weariness disappeared from her face. What remained was the expression of a stern, observant woman.

That same evening, a black car stopped in front of the restaurant. The window rolled down, and a young man looked at me from inside. He was tall, had a calm face, and wore such an expensive watch that with its price we could have paid our house rent for an entire year.

“Do you know that woman?” he asked me.

“Now I do.”

“Do you help everyone like this?”

“I help everyone who is hungry.”

His lips formed a slight smile.

“I am Daniel Vango.”

The name was familiar to me. Everyone in the city knew the Vangos’ industrial empire, but I did not know that the man was standing before me.

That night my mother had an attack of coughing. I had no money left to buy medicine. In the morning Adora was no longer there. In her place, on the chair, lay a small copper pendant on which a half-moon was engraved.

As soon as I picked it up, I heard Daniel’s voice behind me.

“Did she leave this for you?”

“I don’t know.”

He looked at the pendant, and the smile disappeared from his face.

“My mother had a thing like this twenty-two years ago.”

At these words Adora got out of the car. But this time she was no longer an old woman. She stood with a straight back, wearing an expensive coat, and two guards stood behind her.

“Amara,” she said to me, “you must come home.”

“Why?”

“Because your mother never told me something.”

“You do not know my mother.”

Adora looked at the pendant clutched in my hand. Her fingers trembled.

“I know her,” she said quietly. “Better than you think.”

Then she turned to Daniel.

“It is time to open the folder.”

Daniel opened the car door and reached for the stuffed brown folder inside. His fingers moved toward the clasp…

Daniel’s hand touched the clasp, but I stepped back.

“First explain to me what is happening.”

Adora looked at the street. Curious faces had appeared by the restaurant windows.

“Not here,” she said.

“Then I am not coming at all.”

“If you do not open this folder, I cannot help your mother.”

Those words stopped me.

“What connection does my mother have with you?”

Adora pressed her lips together.

“Twenty-two years ago she worked in my house. That night my little daughter disappeared.”

My heart contracted.

“And you think my mother took her?”

“I do not know what I think. I know only that that night she was holding this pendant.”

Daniel lost his composure for the first time.

“Mother, enough.”

“No, Daniel. We must no longer hide the truth.”

She opened the folder, but I saw only the corner of one yellowed photograph inside. In the photograph there was a small child with a half-moon-like mark on her chest.

“This is a photograph from my childhood,” I said.

Adora seemed to stop breathing.

At that moment my phone rang. It was the doctor.

“Amara, come to the hospital urgently. Your mother lost consciousness and keeps repeating one thing: ‘Do not tell Adora that the child is alive’…”

The phone almost fell from my hand.

“Doctor, what does this mean?” I asked.

For a moment silence fell on the other end of the line.

“Your mother regained consciousness, but she is very weak. She repeats only this. When she heard Adora’s name, she grabbed my hand and told me not to tell you anything.”

Adora was already walking toward the car.

“We are going to the hospital,” she said.

“You are not coming with me.”

“Amara, if this is about my daughter, I must be there.”

“I am not your daughter.”

I said these words aloud, but inside I was already afraid that they might not be true.

In the small hospital room my mother lay on a white pillow. She wore a plastic bracelet on her wrist, and her lips were so dry that it seemed she had been drinking sand all night. When she saw Adora, she opened her eyes.

“You found her after all,” she whispered.

Adora stopped beside the bed.

“Where is my child?”

My mother looked at me.

“She is here.”

Such silence fell in the room that I heard the hum of the refrigerator motor.

“No,” Daniel said. “This is impossible.”

My mother took a folded letter from the old cloth bag. The edges of the paper were burned.

“Your husband came that night, Adora. He told me the child had died. But the child was alive. He offered me money to keep silent. I took the child and raised her as my own.”

Adora’s knees gave way.

“My husband? Nikoloz?”

My mother nodded.

Daniel took the letter from me. At the bottom stood a signature: “Nikoloz Vango.”

“The DNA result is here too,” Adora said, taking a second sheet from the folder. “Amara is my daughter.”

I could not breathe.

Daniel grabbed the chair.

“Amara is my sister?”

Adora moved toward me, but I stepped back.

“Twenty-two years…” I said. “For twenty-two years my mother lived in fear, and you were testing me?”

“I did not know that you were alive,” Adora cried.

At that moment Daniel’s phone rang. He listened, then his face changed.

“The lawyer says Nikoloz’s former head of security is alive. And he called the police this morning.”

“What did he say?” I asked.

Daniel looked toward the window.

“He said that letter is only one part. The second piece of evidence is in Nikoloz’s safe, and if we reach it, someone will have to go to prison…”