Chapter 3 - THE GIRL WITH THE SILVER PENDANTThe Name Hidden for Eleven YearsSylvester ran after her.
The hallway twisted through the old wing of the mansion.
The girl moved fast.
Too fast for someone who had supposedly been hidden in a house where nobody had seen her.
She disappeared around a corner.
Sylvester reached it.
Nothing.
"No!"
Noah ran behind him.
"Dad!"
Sylvester stopped.
A small ventilation grate rattled above them.
He looked up.
The girl was watching from inside the passage.
Her eyes met his.
"Lucia?"
She shook her head.
"That's not my name."
"Then what is it?"
The girl hesitated.
"Anna."
Sylvester's expression changed.
"Who told you to use that name?"
She looked toward Evelyn.
Noah noticed.
"She's scared of her."
Anna's eyes widened.
"Don't say her name."
Evelyn's voice came from the far end of the hall.
"Anna."
The girl immediately disappeared.
Sylvester stepped between them.
"Nobody moves."
Evelyn stopped.
"What did you do to that child?"
"I kept her alive."
"From what?"
"From you."
Sylvester's jaw tightened.
"You expect me to believe that?"
"You should have asked better questions eleven years ago."
That sentence struck him harder than anything else.
Before Sylvester could answer, a security alarm erupted through the house.
Every monitor in the hallway switched to static.
The mansion security system had been breached.
One of the guards shouted into his radio.
"We've lost the external cameras!"
Gunfire cracked from outside.
Sylvester pulled Noah behind a pillar.
Security guards scattered.
Evelyn ducked.
Another burst of gunfire shattered a window.
Someone was attacking the mansion.
But the attackers weren't trying to enter.
They were destroying evidence.
Fire erupted in the library.
Then the archive room.
Smoke spread through the hallway.
Sylvester looked toward the hidden archive.
"Get the files!"
A guard ran inside.
Seconds later he returned with the black folder.
"The rest is burning."
Sylvester took it.
Anna appeared at the far end of the corridor.
She was holding a metal box.
"Take this!"
She threw it.
Sylvester caught it.
The box was old.
On the lid were three initials.
S.S.E.
Sylvester looked at Evelyn.
Her face collapsed.
"No."
He opened the box.
Inside were cassette tapes, photographs, and a hospital bracelet.
One photograph showed Sylvester standing beside a hospital bed.
A woman lay unconscious beneath white sheets.
His first wife.
And beside her were two newborn babies.
Twins.
Sylvester stared.
Two.
Not one.
Noah looked over his shoulder.
"We're twins."
Sylvester could barely breathe.
Anna watched him.
"I told you."
Sylvester looked at her.
"You knew?"
"Not everything."
"Who is our mother?"
Anna's eyes filled.
"They told me she died."
Sylvester turned toward Evelyn.
"And did she?"
Evelyn didn't answer.
The alarm continued screaming.
A guard shouted:
"Sir, we found someone in the east garden!"
Sylvester followed him outside.
A wounded man lay near the fountain.
Older.
Blood soaking his shirt.
Sylvester recognized him.
Dr. Marcus Vale.
The physician who had signed Noah's original birth records.
"You."
Marcus coughed.
"They know."
"Who?"
"The people who took Lucia."
Sylvester knelt.
"Where is my daughter?"
Marcus looked toward Anna.
"She was never taken far."
"What does that mean?"
Marcus reached into his pocket.
He pulled out a photograph.
It showed the mansion.
And on the second-floor balcony stood a woman.
Alive.
Sylvester stared.
It was his dead wife.
His hands went cold.
"That's impossible."
Marcus whispered:
"That's why they separated the twins."
Sylvester looked at the photograph again.
The woman had one hand against the glass.
On the image, someone had written:
SHE SURVIVED.
Marcus suddenly grabbed Sylvester's wrist.
"Don't trust the medical records."
Then his eyes rolled shut.
Dead.
Noah stared at the photograph.
"Dad..."
Sylvester couldn't look away.
For eleven years, he had believed his wife died.
Now someone was telling him she had survived.
And if she had survived...
Why had she never come home?
A phone rang inside Evelyn's pocket.
She answered.
Her eyes widened.
A distorted voice spoke through the receiver.
"Phase two has begun."
Evelyn whispered:
"What do you want?"
The voice answered:
"The second child."
Evelyn looked at Anna.
Then at Sylvester.
"And if I refuse?"
The voice went silent.
A photograph slid beneath the mansion door.
Evelyn picked it up.
She stared.
Her face turned white.
Sylvester took it from her.
It showed Noah and Anna standing together.
Taken less than a minute earlier.
From inside the mansion.
May you like
On the back was one sentence:
BRING THEM BOTH TO THE LAKE BEFORE MIDNIGHT.
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