Chapter 2
I stared at the boy as if the world had turned sideways.
“She?” I asked.
He did not answer.
Amelia’s knees buckled.
I lunged forward and caught her before she fell.
The ballroom erupted.
People gasped.
My sister shouted for security.
My mother began crying loudly enough for every guest to hear.
But Amelia only clung to my jacket and whispered, “Don’t send him away.”
I lowered her back into the wheelchair.
Her face had gone pale.
Her breathing came fast.
“Did he hurt you?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“No.”
“Then who is he?”
Her eyes moved to the boy.
He stood still, surrounded by guards twice his size.
“My name is Noah,” he said.
“Noah what?”
He hesitated.
“Noah Reyes.”
The name meant nothing to me.
But it meant something to Miranda.
I saw it.
A twitch near her mouth.
A flash of panic gone too quickly.
I turned toward her.
“Do you know him?”
She laughed.
“Adrian, he broke into your gala. Stop making this dramatic.”
Amelia whispered, “Daddy.”
I looked back at her.
Her fingers were wrapped around mine.
“Please listen.”
That was the first time in months she had asked me for anything without apologizing first.
So I listened.
Noah reached into his torn pocket.
The guards moved closer.
I raised one hand.
“Wait.”
He pulled out a folded envelope.
It was old.
Soft at the edges.
My name was written across the front in handwriting I knew better than my own.
Adrian.
My heart stopped.
Elena’s handwriting.
My dead wife’s handwriting.
The room blurred.
I took the envelope.
My fingers shook.
Miranda stood so fast her chair scraped the floor.
“That is fake.”
I looked at her.
“You haven’t seen it.”
Her lips parted.
Noah said, “My mother kept it hidden.”
“Who was your mother?”
“Rosa Reyes.”
Now I knew.
Rosa had been Amelia’s night nurse after the accident.
She vanished two years ago.
Miranda told me Rosa had stolen jewelry and run.
I believed her.
God help me, I believed her.
Noah’s voice cracked.
“My mother said if anything happened to her, I had to find Amelia.”
My skin turned cold.
“What happened to Rosa?”
He looked at Miranda.
“She died.”
The ballroom went silent again.
Not polite silence.
Terrified silence.
I opened the envelope.
Inside was one page.
Elena’s last letter.
Adrian, if Amelia stops walking, do not believe the first doctor. Do not let Miranda control her care. Trust Rosa. Trust what our daughter tells you. Someone in this house wants her weak.
I could not move.
I could not speak.
Miranda whispered, “This is cruel.”
I turned to her slowly.
“No,” I said. “Cruel is that you knew.”
May you like
Her face hardened.
For the first time, my sister looked less like family and more like a cornered stranger.
