Chapter 3 - THE DAUGHTER WHO VANISHED
The guests stopped whispering.
They stared at me as though my uniform had disappeared and a crown had taken its place.
I hated it.
Five minutes earlier, they had accepted that I was a thief because a diamond necklace sat inside my bag.
Now they were willing to accept that I was an heiress because an attorney held a letter.
Neither reaction had anything to do with who I was.
Daniel dismissed the guests and ordered the entire security system preserved for police.
Vanessa stayed close to Victor.
They spoke in whispers that stopped whenever anyone looked at them.
Detective Reyes arrived with two officers.
She watched the recording twice.
Then she photographed the red mark on my cheek and asked whether I wanted to press charges.
“Yes,” I said.
Vanessa gasped.
“Emily, I said I panicked.”
“You planned it,” I answered.
“You carried the necklace in your purse.”
“You waited until the room was full.”
“You hit me before anyone opened the bag.”
“That wasn't panic.”
“That was a performance.”
Reyes took Vanessa into the library for questioning.
Victor followed with the family attorney, but Michael stopped him.
“I represent the trust,” Michael said.
“I do not represent you.”
Margaret led me into a small sitting room beside the west wing.
The portrait my adoptive mother had mentioned hung above the fireplace.
Claire looked younger in the painting than she did in my locket.
She wore jeans, no jewelry, and a smile that made my chest hurt.
Margaret sat beside me but left space between us.
“I was told Claire stole the Harrington Star necklace,” she said.
“I was told she emptied a company account and ran away with a married man.”
“Did you believe it?”
Her silence answered first.
“I believed my husband,” she finally said.
“Charles showed me bank records.”
“He showed me a letter in Claire's handwriting.”
“Three days later, the police found her car at the bottom of a ravine.”
“No body was recovered.”
I looked toward the portrait.
“So you declared her dead.”
Margaret flinched.
“Charles said it was the only way to protect Daniel and the company.”
Daniel stood in the doorway.
He had heard everything.
“I was fourteen,” he said.
“Dad told me Claire abandoned us.”
“He made me promise never to speak her name around Mom.”
A security technician entered carrying a tablet.
He had been reviewing the mansion's oldest archived recordings at Daniel's request.
Most of the system had been replaced years ago, but one storage drive had survived in a locked cabinet.
The technician placed the tablet on the table.
“This was recorded the night Miss Claire disappeared,” he said.
The black-and-white image showed the mansion's service entrance at 11:17 p.m.
Claire appeared on-screen.
She was pregnant, frightened, and very much alive.
Two men forced her into the back seat of a sedan.
One of them was Daniel's father.
The other was Victor Lang.
The sedan drove away.
Then a third person stepped from the shadows and watched it leave.
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It was Margaret.
And she had been standing there the entire time.
