Chapter 3 - THE GHOST WHO WORE MY SISTER'S FACEFor a moment, I thought I'd misunderstood him.
My sister was dead.
I'd attended her funeral.
I'd stood beside the graves of our parents while a minister read Sophie's favorite passage from a book of poetry.
I'd watched three coffins lowered into the ground.
"What did you say?" I whispered.
Theron looked exhausted.
His perfect black hair was disheveled, and there was a nervous twitch near his left eye.
"Vivienne says your sister didn't die in the fire."
I stared at him.
"That's impossible."
"She says your father arranged for Sophie to disappear."
My breath caught.
Vivienne had just admitted locking my sister inside the burning house.
Why would she now tell Theron that Sophie survived?
Unless she wanted something from him.
Or unless the truth was even worse than I'd imagined.
"Who told Vivienne?" I demanded.
Theron hesitated.
"That's not important."
"It is to me!"
He flinched at the sudden strength in my voice.
I gripped the edge of a storage shelf and forced myself upright.
My legs trembled.
Theron reached toward me.
I recoiled.
"Don't touch me."
Something changed in his expression.
For the first time since he'd dragged me downstairs, he looked uncomfortable.
"Elise, I lost my temper."
"You beat me."
"I thought you'd hurt Vivienne."
"And that made it acceptable?"
He looked away.
I studied his face.
Was he pretending remorse?
Or had something genuinely frightened him?
"Show me the photograph," I said.
He handed it over.
The picture had been taken three months before the fire.
Dad stood behind Mom, smiling.
I was beside him.
Sophie stood at the far end, holding our golden retriever.
The red message was written across the back.
ASK HER ABOUT SOPHIE.
Beneath it was a small symbol.
A circle divided by three lines.
I recognized it immediately.
My father used to draw that symbol on important documents.
He called it his lucky compass.
Nobody outside our family knew about it.
Nobody except Gideon.
"Where did you get this?" I asked.
"It was delivered to the front gate."
"By whom?"
"No name."
"Was there an envelope?"
Theron frowned.
"Why?"
"Because someone wants you to be afraid."
He stared at me.
"Do you know what this means?"
I looked at the image again.
Then I realized something.
The photograph wasn't the original.
In the original, Sophie's left hand rested on the dog's head.
Here, her hand was raised slightly.
And beneath her sleeve, visible for the first time, was a distinctive silver bracelet.
A bracelet I'd bought her for Christmas.
One I'd never seen after the fire.
"This photograph was taken from a different camera," I whispered.
"What?"
"Someone else was standing there that day."
Theron's phone rang.
He glanced at the screen.
Vivienne.
He rejected the call.
That alone told me something was terribly wrong.
For six months, he'd answered every one of her calls, even when we were having dinner.
"Elise," he said quietly, "I need you to tell me something."
I waited.
"Did your father ever mention a company called Bellwether Holdings?"
My blood went cold.
Bellwether.
I'd seen that name once before.
On a document among my father's papers after the fire.
The attorney handling the estate had quickly taken it away.
"He said it was an outdated investment," I answered carefully.
Theron closed his eyes.
"Of course he did."
"Why?"
He rubbed his forehead.
"Because Bellwether owns forty-two percent of Ashworth Industries."
The room seemed to tilt.
"What?"
"Through a series of holding companies and voting trusts. My grandfather arranged the structure thirty years ago."
"And?"
"My father told me Bellwether had been dissolved."
I stared at him.
"Was it?"
Theron didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
A company I'd never heard of controlled almost half the business empire my husband believed he owned.
My father had known.
And Vivienne wanted whatever documentation proved it.
Suddenly, the jade pendant felt impossibly heavy against my skin.
"Does Vivienne know?" I asked.
Theron gave a short, humorless laugh.
"Vivienne knows more about my company than I do."
That was probably the first honest thing he'd said all night.
His phone rang again.
This time, the screen displayed an unfamiliar number.
He answered.
"Hello?"
His expression changed.
"Who is this?"
A pause.
Then his face drained of color.
"That's impossible."
I watched him grip the phone.
"Where are you?"
A woman's voice crackled through the speaker.
I couldn't make out the words.
But something about its frightened tone made my heart ache.
Theron listened.
Then he looked at me.
"Elise," he said, barely above a whisper, "someone wants to talk to you."
He extended the phone.
I hesitated.
Then I took it.
"Hello?"
For several seconds, there was only static.
Then a woman's voice whispered my childhood nickname.
"Lissy?"
My knees nearly gave way.
Nobody had called me that since the fire.
Nobody except Sophie.
"Who is this?"
The woman began crying.
"Lissy, please don't hang up."
I pressed my free hand against the wall.
"Who are you?"
"It's me."
I couldn't breathe.
"No."
"Remember the little blue boat Dad bought us? The one we named the Midnight Mermaid?"
My eyes filled with tears.
Sophie and I had painted that name on the boat ourselves.
We'd never told anyone else.
"Where are you?" I whispered.
The woman inhaled sharply.
"I can't tell you. They'll find me."
"Who will?"
A pause.
Then she said something that shattered every explanation I'd been building.
"Vivienne isn't the woman you think she is."
The line crackled.
"She didn't just hurt our family, Lissy. She took something from me."
"What?"
"My name."
I stared at the phone.
"What does that mean?"
"She's been using my identity for eight years."
Then a door slammed in the background.
The woman gasped.
"Oh, God. They're here."
"Sophie!"
"If Gideon found the ledger, don't let Theron see page seventeen."
"Why?"
"Because that's where they recorded the payments."
"Payments for what?"
Her answer came in a strangled whisper.
"For the night your husband helped them burn our house down."
The connection died.
I stood frozen.
Theron watched me with an expression I couldn't read.
"What did she say?" he asked.
I looked at the man who had held me at my family's graves.
The man who had promised to help me heal.
The man I'd trusted with every painful memory of my childhood.
And for the first time, I wondered whether he'd known exactly what happened to Sophie all along.
I handed the phone back.
"Wrong number," I whispered.
He stared at me.
We both knew I was lying.
But neither of us said another word.
Upstairs, a door slammed.
Vivienne's voice echoed through the hallway.
"THERON!"
My husband turned toward the stairs.
Then my phone vibrated.
A message from Gideon appeared.
The woman who called you is telling the truth. But there is one detail she doesn't know.
I typed with shaking fingers.
What detail?
His response arrived immediately.
Your father ordered me to protect two daughters.
I stared at the words.
Two daughters.
Not one.
And if Sophie had truly survived, that meant eight years of mourning had been built upon an elaborate lie.
But it also meant something else.
Someone had kept her hidden all this time.
Someone powerful enough to bury a murder investigation, forge death certificates, and infiltrate one of America's wealthiest families.
When I looked up, Theron was watching me again.
"Elise," he said carefully, "who are you texting?"
May you like
Before I could answer, every light in Ashworth Manor went out.
And from somewhere deep beneath the house, a woman screamed.
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