Chapter 5 - The Girl in the Security FootageThe woman in the footage wore a gray coat and held a black umbrella over her head.
Her face was clearly visible for less than two seconds.
It was enough.
Nadia stepped closer to the screen, unable to reconcile what she was seeing with the life she remembered.
The same dark eyebrows.
The same delicate scar near the left temple.
The same faint dimple beneath the right corner of the mouth.
She looked like Nadia.
Not a cousin. Not a distant relative.
A version of herself photographed under different lighting.
“Who is she?” Casius asked.
Nadia shook her head.
“I've never seen her before.”
Gemma took the tablet from the guard.
Her hands began to shake.
“That isn't possible.”
Matteo moved beside her.
“What is it?”
Gemma zoomed in on the image.
“The pendant.”
The woman wore a silver crescent surrounded by three stars.
The same symbol that had appeared on Victoria's necklace, the photograph, and the tiny locket hidden inside the wedding gown.
Gemma's face hardened.
“That's the second daughter.”
Mrs. Bellini sat down heavily.
“No. There were only two.”
“Exactly,” Gemma said. “Anna and me. Nadia was born years later.”
Matteo stared at the image.
“Unless the records were changed again.”
Casius took the tablet.
“Security, identify the vehicle, the driver, and every person who crossed the gate tonight. Nobody deletes anything.”
He handed it back and turned toward Nadia.
“Your mother told us she wasn't the only child born that night. We assumed she meant Isabella. But the footage shows another woman wearing the family symbol.”
“Could it be a relative?” Nadia asked.
“Not with that face.”
The resemblance was too precise to dismiss.
Nadia searched her memory for any hint that her mother had another child. She remembered no siblings, no cousins who visited, no stories about other pregnancies. Anna had raised her alone. After the cancer diagnosis, she had become quieter, spending long evenings in the kitchen staring at the telephone.
A month before she died, Anna had given Nadia a small wooden box.
“Keep this safe,” she had said. “No matter what anyone tells you, never let it leave your possession.”
Nadia had opened it after the funeral.
Inside was a silver crescent pendant, a photograph of Anna beside a lake, and a folded note with just one sentence.
If you ever meet a woman who has your face, do not trust her until she tells you what happened in the room with the blue door.
Nadia had always assumed it was a warning about some old family argument.
Now the sentence returned with devastating clarity.
“There was a note,” she said.
Casius turned toward her.
“What note?”
“My mother left me something before she died. She wrote that if I ever met a woman who looked like me, I shouldn't trust her until she explained what happened in a room with a blue door.”
Matteo's expression changed instantly.
Mrs. Bellini covered her mouth.
Gemma slowly lowered the tablet.
“The room with the blue door,” she whispered. “That's where they separated us.”
Nadia stared at her.
“You remember it?”
“No. I remember what my mother told me.”
Gemma's voice had become strangely quiet.
“When I was a child, Victoria used to visit me at night. Not often. Three times, perhaps four. She would sit beside my bed and tell me I had a sister. She said that one day, my sister would come looking for me, and I must never let anyone convince me she was my enemy.”
“Why didn't you tell anyone?”
“Because my father heard her talking to me. The next morning, he told me Victoria had died in a car accident and that the woman who visited me was an impostor. He punished the servants who let her in. After that, nobody ever spoke of her again.”
“Yet you remembered.”
“I remembered the blue door.”
Gemma looked up at Nadia.
“It was inside an old maternity clinic near the East River. The clinic closed after a fire in 1987. My father told me it had never existed.”
Matteo nodded slowly.
“It existed.”
Casius checked his watch.
“We need that clinic's records.”
“There's no point,” Gemma replied. “Vittorio bought the building and demolished it fifteen years ago.”
“Then we'll find whoever handled the records.”
Matteo looked at the tablet again.
“First, we need to find that woman.”
A guard hurried into the room.
“Boss, we have the vehicle registration.”
Casius took the report.
The sedan belonged to a shell company registered to a man named Daniel Voss.
Nadia recognized the name.
She had scheduled three meetings with him in the previous year. He was listed as a financial adviser to the Leone organization, a quiet man who wore inexpensive suits and never spoke unless Casius addressed him directly.
“Daniel Voss works for you,” she said.
Casius looked at her.
“He handles the old trusts.”
“Then why is he driving with a woman who looks like me?”
“Perhaps because he's been working for someone else.”
The guard continued.
“We searched his office. It's empty. His computer was wiped, and the safe has been removed.”
Casius handed the report to Matteo.
“Who is Daniel Voss?”
Matteo read the page.
Then he slowly folded it in half.
“He was one of the children taken into protective custody after the 1986 murders.”
“Another survivor?”
“Not a survivor. A witness.”
Matteo looked toward the dead telephone.
“When Victoria's daughters were separated, a nurse helped her escape with Anna. The nurse's son was present when the men came to retrieve the second child. He saw who ordered the transfer. Years later, that boy changed his name and became Daniel Voss.”
“Why would he work for us?” Nadia asked.
“To keep the evidence close.”
Casius's expression darkened.
“Then he has been watching us for years.”
“And waiting for something,” Matteo said. “Perhaps for someone to wear the gown.”
Nadia felt the silk shift against her skin.
The dress suddenly seemed less like clothing and more like a message written by a dead woman.
She turned toward Mrs. Bellini.
“You said Victoria intended to give the gowns to her daughters on their twenty-first birthdays. How could she know which one would need it?”
“I don't think she did,” the seamstress replied. “I think she hoped they would both find their way home.”
Nadia looked back at the footage.
“Could we enhance the image?”
The guard nodded and began working on the tablet.
The woman had entered through the gate at 11:47. At 11:49, the image showed her speaking to the man believed to be Casius's dead uncle.
At 11:52, she disappeared behind the security booth.
At 11:55, the estate's cameras went dark.
Four minutes later, the shooting began.
Casius pointed toward the footage.
“Pause there.”
The guard froze the image.
The woman was standing beside the sedan, her face turned toward the camera.
Nadia leaned closer.
Something was wrong.
The woman's face resembled hers, but her posture was different. Her left shoulder sat slightly lower than her right. Her head tilted toward the light rather than away from it. More importantly, she held the umbrella in her left hand.
Nadia had been left-handed her entire life.
So had Anna.
Nadia's fingers tightened around the tablet.
“She's not just someone who looks like me.”
Casius watched her carefully.
“What are you saying?”
“She moves like I do.”
The room went quiet.
Then the guard zoomed in on the woman's wrist.
A thin scar curved from the base of her thumb toward her palm.
Identical to Nadia's.
Identical to Anna's.
Matteo sank into a chair.
“No,” he whispered. “That can't be.”
Gemma's face twisted.
“Tell us what you know.”
Matteo stared at the image for a long time.
Then he spoke the sentence that made every person in the room go still.
“Victoria didn't have twins.”
He looked at Nadia.
“She had triplets.”
For several seconds, Nadia couldn't understand the word.
Triplets.
Three children.
Three lives divided among people who had spent forty years burying the truth.
“Where was the third baby taken?” she asked.
Matteo shook his head.
“We don't know.”
“Then how do you know there were three?”
“Because I was there when the doctor delivered them. Two girls and a boy.”
Casius straightened.
“A boy?”
Matteo nodded.
“Victoria told me the boy died before sunrise. But I saw him alive. I watched a nurse carry him through the blue door.”
Nadia's mind raced.
“If that woman is one of the girls, where is the other?”
Gemma looked at the screen.
“And what happened to the boy?”
The guard's tablet chimed.
A new notification had appeared.
It was a message from Daniel Voss.
The text contained no explanation, only an address and six words.
MIDNIGHT. COME ALONE. BRING THE WOMAN IN THE GOWN.
Casius read it twice.
Then he looked at Nadia.
“He knows you're here.”
A second message appeared.
This one was a photograph.
A man was sitting in a dark room, his wrists tied behind a chair.
His face was bruised.
His eyes were familiar.
Nadia recognized him immediately.
Daniel Voss.
May you like
Beneath the photograph were four words.
THE BOY NEVER DIED.
Related Stories
