My own mother abandoned me at the doorstep of a stranger’s apartment. 25 years later, she came to work as my housekeeper, not knowing I was the very daughter she had left behind

“Who is a child without roots? No one. Just a ghost in a borrowed shell.”

“Did you feel like a ghost?” Mikhail asked, stirring his coffee in my kitchen.

He knew everything.

My life began with a silent cry. My birth mother left a note: “Forgive me.”

An elderly couple, Lyudmila and Gennady, found me on their doorstep one October morning. They raised me out of duty, not love.

“You’re in our house, Alexandra, but not in our hearts,” Lyudmila often said.

My childhood was a cot in the hallway, leftover food, and hand-me-down clothes. At school, I was “foundling,” “stray.” I hardened.

By thirteen, I worked odd jobs, hiding money. When Lyudmila found it, she demanded I pay for my stay.

At seventeen, I left for university with only a backpack and a baby photo—the only link to my past.

At twenty-three, I had my own apartment, but success felt empty. A marketing project got investors’ attention, and I earned a stake in a startup.

That’s when I met Mikhail, a private detective who heard my story and helped me find her—Irina Sokolova, forty-seven, divorced, no children.

We planned. I posted a job ad; Mikhail interviewed Irina. A week later, she started cleaning my home.

For two months, she came and went, unaware of who I was.

Then one day, she stopped by my graduation photo.

“You remind me of someone,” she said.

“Irina,” I whispered.