Chapter 12 - The Hidden DaughterDaniel believed the mystery had one answer.
Isabella.
Adrian disagreed.
“She’s too obvious.”
“Then who?”
Daniel looked at me.
“Someone inside the family.”
We returned to Adrian’s private archives.
For hours, we searched birth records.
Adoption documents.
Hospital reports.
Everything had been altered.
Then Adrian found something.
A handwritten note in his father’s files.
Twin B transferred to private care.
I stared.
“Twin?”
Adrian’s face went pale.
“You have a twin?”
“I don’t know.”
Daniel picked up the document.
“The transfer date.”
He looked at me.
“Same day you were born.”
Everything clicked.
My mother hadn’t simply disappeared.
She had hidden one baby.
Me.
The other child was kept by the Duca family.
Adrian searched the family genealogy.
One name appeared repeatedly.
A daughter listed as stillborn.
No photograph.
No burial record.
No certificate.
“Someone erased her.”
“Why?”
Daniel looked at Black Ledger files.
“Because she was the legal heir.”
“To what?”
“All of it.”
Suddenly, the lights went out.
Adrian cursed.
A red laser dot appeared on the wall.
“Down!”
Glass shattered.
We dropped.
Gunfire tore through the archive.
Daniel fired back.
I crawled behind a desk.
Adrian shouted:
“Move!”
I ran.
A bullet struck the floor beside my hand.
Then a woman’s voice echoed through the darkness.
“Adrian.”
He froze.
I recognized it.
Elena.
“Your sister is alive.”
“Where?”
“She has been beside you all along.”
The emergency lights came on.
No one was there.
Except Daniel.
And the photograph lying on the floor.
It showed a little girl.
Four years old.
Standing beside Adrian.
I stared at her face.
Then at my own reflection in the glass.
The resemblance was impossible.
I whispered:
“That’s me.”
Daniel shook his head.
“No.”
He turned the photograph over.
A date was written on the back.
The year I was four.
May you like
And beneath it:
This is Isabella’s daughter.
