Chapter 3
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
I was aware of everything and nothing.
The rain tapping the windows.
The black phone in Thomas’s gloved hand.
Camille breathing too quickly.
Adrian staring at me as if the floor had opened between us.
Marcus’s last sentence repeated in my head.
My daughter.
Living under your roof.
Two years.
I took one step backward.
Adrian immediately moved toward me.
“Hannah.”
I lifted a hand.
Stop.
Not because I was afraid of him.
Because every person in the room was looking at me.
Detective Bennett broke the silence first.
“Ms. Reed, how old are you?”
I held up two fingers, then six.
“Twenty-six?”
I nodded.
Adrian’s eyes narrowed slightly.
Marcus was older than Adrian.
Forty-seven now, if the dates in the family photographs were accurate.
Old enough.
That thought made my stomach turn.
Detective Bennett asked, “Do you know Marcus Romano?”
I shook my head.
“Have you ever met him before today?”
No.
“Did your mother?”
I froze.
Adrian saw it.
Bennett did too.
“What is your mother’s name?”
I took the notebook.
NORA REED.
Elena made a sound behind us.
Very small.
But I heard it.
So did Adrian.
He turned.
“Aunt Elena?”
She looked as though she wanted to disappear.
Adrian stepped toward her.
“You know that name.”
Elena sat heavily in one of the study chairs.
“I knew a Nora Reed.”
My heartbeat climbed.
I wrote:
WHEN?
Elena looked at me.
“Twenty-seven years ago.”
My fingers went numb.
Adrian’s voice sharpened.
“How?”
Elena stared at the floor.
“She worked for Vittorio.”
I looked at Adrian.
He looked equally shocked.
“What did she do?” he asked.
“Administrative work at first. Later she handled private correspondence.”
“For my father?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Three years.”
I could barely breathe.
My mother had died when I was seventeen.
Cancer.
Fast.
Brutal.
She had told me almost nothing about her life before I was born.
No father’s name.
No photographs.
Whenever I asked, she said the man had left before I was born and had not earned the right to be discussed.
I had stopped asking.
Now I wrote so hard the pen almost tore through the page.
DID SHE KNOW MARCUS?
Elena looked at me for a long time.
“Yes.”
Adrian turned away.
His hand went to the back of his neck.
Camille whispered, “Oh my God.”
I glared at her.
She had known something.
Maybe not this.
But enough.
I wrote another question.
WERE THEY TOGETHER?
Elena shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
That was not an answer.
Adrian turned back.
“You lived in the same house. You know more than that.”
“Elena,” Detective Bennett said, “this is no longer a family discussion. A man believed dead for eleven years committed assault and possibly attempted murder tonight. If you know something, now is the time.”
Elena’s face hardened at the accusation.
Then softened when she looked at me.
“Nora was close to Evelyn.”
That surprised everyone.
“Marcus’s fiancée?” Adrian asked.
“Yes.”
“How close?”
“Very.”
I wrote:
FRIENDS?
Elena nodded.
“More like sisters.”
My mother had never mentioned Evelyn Shaw.
Not once.
“After Evelyn died,” Elena continued, “Nora left Vittorio’s employment immediately. She moved out of state. I never saw her again.”
“Where?” Bennett asked.
“Pennsylvania, I think.”
I shook my head.
My mother and I had lived in Pennsylvania until I was eight.
Then New Jersey.
Then I had come to New York for work.
All of it suddenly felt less accidental.
Adrian looked at me.
“You applied here through the agency.”
I nodded.
“You didn’t know this house had any connection to your mother.”
I shook my head hard.
No.
Absolutely not.
But Camille gave a bitter laugh.
“How convenient.”
Adrian’s head snapped toward her.
“Enough.”
“I’m just saying what everyone is thinking.”
“No. You’re saying what you want everyone to think.”
Camille crossed her arms.
“Marcus claims she’s his daughter. Her mother worked for your father and knew Marcus. You cannot pretend that isn’t suspicious.”
The words struck harder than I expected.
Not because I believed her.
Because I could not prove she was wrong.
Adrian turned to Detective Bennett.
“Can you arrange a DNA test?”
“Yes.”
I stared at him.
He looked at me.
“Only if you want it.”
I thought of my mother in a hospital bed.
Thin.
Tired.
Still refusing to name my father.
I had believed it was pain.
Maybe it had been fear.
I nodded.
Yes.
I wanted the truth.
Even if I hated it.
Dr. Patel stepped in.
“Truth can wait two hours. Her neck cannot.”
That ended the discussion.
The hospital smelled like antiseptic and burnt coffee.
Adrian came with me.
I told him he did not have to.
Or tried to, through writing.
He ignored the note.
The emergency department placed me in a private room after Detective Bennett made several phone calls.
Dr. Patel had been right.
My cheekbone was bruised but not fractured.
My throat showed swelling consistent with blunt trauma and strain.
The cuts were shallow.
My vocal cords were irritated but intact.
“Your voice may return gradually,” the ENT specialist told me. “Do not force it. Whispering can actually strain things further. Rest it.”
I wanted to laugh.
Talking had become dangerous.
Now silence was a prescription.
Adrian stood near the window during most of the examination.
He kept his hands in his pockets.
Too controlled.
When the doctors finally left, I wrote:
YOU CAN GO.
He read it.
“No.”
I wrote:
YOUR HOUSE.
“Thomas is handling it.”
POLICE.
“Bennett will call.”
CAMILLE.
At that, his mouth tightened.
“She is not my priority.”
I looked down.
He stepped closer.
“Hannah.”
I met his eyes.
“I need you to understand something.”
He took the chair across from me.
“If Marcus is your biological father, it changes nothing about what he did to you.”
My throat tightened.
He continued.
“It does not excuse him. It does not obligate you to protect him. And it does not make you responsible for anything my family has done.”
I looked at the notebook.
Then wrote:
YOU BELIEVE HIM?
Adrian paused.
“I believe he wanted us to believe him.”
That was different.
I looked up.
“He chose those words carefully,” Adrian said. “He knew the room would turn toward you.”
I pointed at myself.
WHY ME?
“I don’t know.”
He looked toward the window.
“But if Nora Reed was connected to Evelyn, he may have known exactly who you were before today.”
That thought was worse.
I wrote:
HE CALLED ME HANNAH.
Adrian nodded slowly.
“Yes.”
I remembered the west corridor.
Marcus’s hand around my wrist.
The knife.
His eyes.
Not surprised.
Not curious.
He had known me.
He had said my name before I introduced myself.
I had assumed Camille told him.
Maybe she had.
Maybe not.
A nurse entered carrying a clear plastic evidence bag.
“Ms. Reed? These were your personal effects.”
My scarf.
Hair clip.
Small gold necklace.
I rarely removed the necklace.
The hospital staff had taken it off for imaging.
It had belonged to my mother.
A simple oval locket.
Adrian glanced at it.
Then froze.
“What?”
I followed his gaze.
He pointed.
“May I see that?”
I took the locket from the bag and handed it to him.
His face changed.
He turned it over.
On the back was a tiny stamped symbol.
A bird with open wings.
Almost worn smooth.
“Where did you get this?”
I wrote:
MY MOTHER.
Adrian sat very still.
“I’ve seen this symbol before.”
My heart started pounding.
He pulled out his phone.
After several seconds, he found a photograph and enlarged it.
A picture of Evelyn Shaw standing beside Marcus at a summer party.
Around Evelyn’s neck was a nearly identical locket.
Same oval shape.
Same bird.
I stared.
Adrian zoomed closer.
“It’s not a jewelry brand.”
I looked at him.
“How do you know?”
He answered the question I could not speak.
“My father had the same symbol stamped on a private set of document seals.”
He stood.
“I thought it was decorative.”
My fingers closed around the locket.
Adrian called Thomas.
“Go into the archive room.”
A pause.
“No, not the digital archive. The locked storage behind my father’s old office.”
Another pause.
“Find anything marked with a bird. Wings spread. Small crest.”
He listened.
Then his expression changed.
“What do you mean, already open?”
My stomach dropped.
Adrian put the call on speaker.
Thomas’s voice filled the hospital room.
“The archive lock was cut, sir. We just found it.”
“Anything missing?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Check for boxes marked with that symbol.”
Paper moved on the other end.
Footsteps.
Then Thomas swore.
“What?”
“There are shelves labeled by year.”
“And?”
“1999 through 2001 are empty.”
I looked at Adrian.
My birth year was 2000.
He knew it too.
Thomas continued.
“There’s something else.”
“What?”
“One box remains.”
“Marked what?”
A pause.
“Reed.”
I stopped breathing.
Adrian’s eyes met mine.
“Do not open it.”
“Sir?”
“Photograph it where it sits. Bennett needs chain of custody.”
Thomas agreed and hung up.
I stared at the locket in my palm.
The little bird suddenly felt heavier than metal.
Adrian sat beside me.
“Whatever is in that box, we find out together.”
My phone buzzed.
I had almost forgotten it was in my bag.
Unknown number.
A message.
I opened it.
One image loaded.
My mother.
Young.
Maybe twenty-five.
Standing beside Evelyn Shaw.
Both women smiling at the camera.
And behind them—
Marcus Romano.
His arm was around my mother.
On the back wall hung a banner.
ROMANO FOUNDATION SPRING GALA — 1999.
Below the photo was one sentence.
ASK ADRIAN WHY YOUR MOTHER RAN.
My hands went cold.
Then another message appeared.
Not text.
A video.
I pressed play.
Marcus filled the screen.
He sat somewhere dark.
His eyebrow scar visible.
His voice was calm.
“Hannah, if Adrian opens the Reed box, he’ll learn what his father did.”
He leaned toward the camera.
“But if you open it first, you’ll learn what Adrian did.”
The video ended.
I looked at Adrian.
He had heard every word.
His face was pale.
I wrote one question.
May you like
WHAT DID YOU DO?
For the first time that night, Adrian Romano had no answer.
