Chapter 8 - Seven Years of LiesEllie refused to release Dominic's hand during the journey back to the mansion.
She sat beside him in the rear seat, wrapped in a thick blanket, her red bicycle secured in the vehicle behind them.
Every few minutes, she glanced at his face as if checking whether he might disappear.
“Are you angry with me?” she finally asked.
Dominic turned toward her.
“Why would I be angry?”
“Because I called him Daddy.”
Dominic felt his chest tighten.
“You thought he was me.”
“But he looked like you.”
“Yes.”
“Will he come back?”
Dominic considered lying.
Instead, he gently squeezed her hand.
“He might try. But he won't get near you again.”
Ellie leaned against his arm.
“Mommy says bad people sometimes pretend to be good.”
“Your mother is right.”
“Can good people sometimes look scary?”
Dominic glanced at his reflection in the window.
“Yes, sweetheart. They can.”
She thought about that.
“Then I hope you stay the good kind.”
He turned away before she could see his eyes.
Back at the mansion, Marco took Ellie to Margaret while Dominic called every contact he had.
Hospitals. Private investigators. Former detectives. Ship captains who owed him favors. Even people who had spent years pretending they had never heard the name Evans.
Nobody had seen Elena.
At 3:15 a.m., a message arrived.
It contained a photograph of the crescent pendant resting on a metal table.
Beside it lay a bloodstained white ribbon.
Underneath was a single line:
ASK YOUR NIECE WHAT HER MOTHER TOLD HER ABOUT THE LIGHTHOUSE.
Dominic immediately went upstairs.
Ellie sat at a small desk, drawing with colored pencils. She had refused to sleep until Margaret promised to leave the hallway light on.
“Ellie?”
She looked up.
“Have you ever heard your mother talk about a lighthouse?”
Her pencil stopped.
Dominic noticed.
“What is it?”
She slowly opened her coat pocket and removed a folded piece of paper.
“I was going to show you tomorrow.”
“Where did you get that?”
“Mommy gave it to me before she left to find medicine.”
Dominic unfolded the paper.
A rough drawing showed a lighthouse beside a bridge. Beneath it, Elena had written:
When the moon is gone, follow the first light. Beneath the waterline, the truth is waiting.
Dominic studied the sketch.
The lighthouse stood near an abandoned coastal station outside the city. The old building had been used by the Evans shipping company decades earlier, before his father moved operations to Brooklyn.
He looked at Ellie.
“Why didn't you tell me this earlier?”
“I was scared.”
“Of what?”
She lowered her voice.
“Mommy said the people looking for us would hurt anyone who knew.”
Dominic crouched beside her.
“You don't have to be scared of telling me things.”
“What if you get hurt?”
“Then I'll handle it.”
“What if you get hurt because of me?”
Dominic took her small hands.
“Ellie, listen carefully. Adults are responsible for protecting children. Children are not responsible for protecting adults. Do you understand?”
She nodded slowly.
He hoped the words would remain with her long after the fear had faded.
Then he asked the question he had been avoiding.
“Did your mother ever tell you who your father was?”
Ellie stared at the drawing.
“She said he wasn't a bad man. He just made a terrible mistake.”
Dominic waited.
“She said he believed someone who wanted to hurt her.”
His throat tightened.
“Did she tell you his name?”
Ellie looked up.
“No. She said I'd know him when I saw him.”
Dominic thought of Victor standing in the warehouse, wearing his face, telling a little girl that he was her family.
He thought of their father, the secret letter, and the photograph of two newborn boys.
Then he saw another possibility.
Victor might not have been trying to claim Ellie simply because she was connected to Elena.
He might have been trying to erase the last living witness to what happened before the fire.
Dominic stood.
“Marco!”
The bodyguard appeared in the doorway.
“Boss?”
“Get the lighthouse location ready. We're leaving in ten minutes.”
Marco nodded.
Then Dominic noticed something on the desk beside Ellie.
A small envelope.
He picked it up and opened it.
Inside was a photograph of a baby lying in a hospital bassinet.
On the back, Elena had written:
THE WRONG CHILD CAME HOME.
Dominic stared at the words.
“Ellie,” he asked slowly, “did your mother ever tell you that you were switched at birth?”
Ellie's face went white.
She shook her head.
But before Dominic could speak again, Margaret rushed into the room, holding a telephone.
“Mr. Evans, there's a woman downstairs asking for you.”
“Who?”
Margaret looked as though she'd seen a ghost.
“She says she's Elena Evans.”
Dominic rushed toward the staircase.
Halfway down, he stopped.
At the bottom stood a woman with dark hair, a pale face, and the crescent-moon pendant hanging around her neck.
She looked at Dominic.
Then she looked at Ellie.
May you like
And she whispered:
“That's not my daughter.”
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