Chapter 3 - THE GIRL WHO DIED TWICEAdrian did not take Clara to his penthouse.
It was the first place anyone would expect him to go.
Instead, he took her to a townhouse on East Seventy-First Street that officially belonged to a shell corporation and unofficially belonged to Adrian’s late mother.
He had purchased it twelve years earlier after discovering Elena used to stop in front of the building whenever they visited Manhattan.
She had once told him she dreamed of living in a quiet brownstone instead of a mansion filled with security guards.
Adrian had bought the place and left it almost empty.
He had never told anyone why.
Now he opened the front door and watched the woman who might be Elena’s daughter step inside.
Her freshly washed hair reached her waist after the salon removed nearly four feet of damage.
It was still extraordinarily long.
Clean, it was chestnut rather than brown.
Just like Elena’s.
Clara touched the wall.
“This place smells like oranges.”
Adrian froze.
The housekeeper used orange oil on the wood.
Elena had polished furniture with orange oil every Saturday.
He told himself that meant nothing.
Coincidences became dangerous when a man wanted to believe something badly enough.
“You’ll stay here tonight,” he said.
Clara looked toward the staircase.
“Am I allowed to leave?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“No.”
She gave him a tired look.
“At least you’re honest.”
“I’m keeping you alive.”
“You don’t know that anyone wants me dead.”
“Someone called me and said you should have stayed dead.”
“Fair point.”
Adrian almost smiled again.
He hated how easily she made pieces of Elena appear inside the room.
Marco entered carrying two folders and a laptop.
“DNA lab can send someone tonight.”
Clara stiffened.
Adrian noticed.
“Nobody touches you without permission.”
“I’ll do it.”
He studied her.
“You’re sure?”
“If I’m not your sister, I want to know.”
“And if you are?”
Clara looked toward the dark windows.
“I don’t know.”
Neither did Adrian.
For most of his life, family had been simple.
His father was dead.
His mother and sister were dead.
Adrian was the last Vale.
He had built his empire around that emptiness.
If Clara was Sofia, then every assumption beneath his life was about to split open.
A private laboratory technician arrived shortly after midnight.
Two cheek swabs.
A chain-of-custody form.
An enormous rush fee.
Results promised within twelve hours.
Clara slept upstairs.
Adrian did not sleep.
At three in the morning, Marco found him sitting in the kitchen with Elena’s ring on the table.
Clara had reluctantly allowed him to examine it.
Inside the band were three tiny letters.
E.S.V.
Elena Sofia Vale.
It had belonged to Adrian’s grandmother first and had been given to Elena when she married Vincent.
Adrian knew because he had chosen the emerald replacement after Elena lost the original stone when he was twelve.
It was the same ring.
No possibility remained.
The only question was how Clara had gotten it.
“You believe her,” Marco said.
Adrian poured coffee.
“I believe the ring.”
“Could have been stolen.”
“Yes.”
“The memories could have been researched.”
“Yes.”
“The scar, the ice cream, the carpet—”
“I know.”
Marco sat across from him.
“So why are you looking like you’ve already decided?”
Adrian stared into the coffee.
“Because when Sofia was five, she broke my nose.”
Marco blinked.
“I’m sorry?”
“I took her stuffed rabbit and held it over my head. She jumped from the couch and hit me with a wooden train.”
“That explains a lot about your personality.”
Adrian ignored him.
“When Clara panicked at the salon, she swung with her left arm.”
“So?”
“Sofia was left-handed.”
“That’s not proof.”
“No.”
Adrian rubbed his jaw.
“But I remember that exact expression she made after she hit me.”
Marco leaned back.
“You haven’t seen her in twenty-three years.”
“No.”
“People change.”
“Not everything.”
His phone vibrated at 6:42 a.m.
The laboratory.
Adrian stared at the screen for three seconds before answering.
“Vale.”
The technician confirmed his identity.
Then delivered the result.
Probability of full sibling relationship:
99.98 percent.
Adrian didn’t move.
Marco watched his face.
“What?”
Adrian ended the call.
He walked upstairs.
Clara was already awake.
She sat on the edge of the guest bed wearing borrowed sweatpants and a white T-shirt, staring at the first sunrise through the curtains.
Adrian stopped in the doorway.
She turned.
Neither spoke.
Then she saw his expression.
“Oh.”
One small sound.
That was all.
Adrian nodded.
Clara covered her mouth.
“No.”
He nodded again.
She stood too quickly.
“I’m Sofia?”
“You’re Sofia.”
Her knees buckled.
Adrian caught her before she hit the floor.
For several seconds, she fought him.
Then something inside her broke.
She grabbed the front of his shirt and sobbed.
Not elegantly.
Not quietly.
Twenty-three years seemed to come out of her at once.
“I thought I made you up.”
Adrian closed his eyes.
His arms tightened around her.
“I thought you were dead.”
“I thought maybe you were a dream.”
“You were six.”
“I remember your shoulders.”
He laughed despite himself.
Sofia cried harder.
“You used to carry me.”
“I remember.”
“You called me—”
She stopped.
Her entire body stiffened.
Adrian pulled back.
“What?”
Her eyes widened.
“Firefly.”
Adrian’s breath caught.
Nobody had called her that except him.
Sofia had been terrified of the dark.
At night, she carried a cheap plastic flashlight everywhere. Adrian had told her she was his little firefly.
“Say it again,” she whispered.
Adrian couldn’t.
Not immediately.
The most feared man in New York suddenly had tears running down his face.
“Firefly.”
Sofia wrapped her arms around him.
For the first time in twenty-three years, Adrian Vale cried where another person could see.
He didn’t care.
Later that morning, reality returned.
It came in the form of a folder Marco placed on the dining table.
“We found something about the fire.”
Adrian opened it.
The official report claimed an electrical failure caused the blaze at the Vale estate in Massachusetts.
But Marco had obtained photographs from a retired fire inspector.
The burn pattern began in three different places.
Library.
West hallway.
Master bedroom.
Accelerant had been detected.
Arson.
“Why wasn’t this in the final report?” Adrian asked.
“Because the lead investigator changed his conclusion forty-eight hours later.”
“Who pressured him?”
“We don’t know.”
“Find out.”
“I already have someone checking.”
Sofia sat opposite Adrian.
“There was a man in the house that night.”
Adrian looked at her.
“You remember?”
“Pieces.”
“What man?”
“I don’t know his name.”
“Describe him.”
“Gray hair. Thick glasses. He smelled like cigars.”
Adrian and Marco exchanged a look.
There had been many men around Vincent Vale who smoked cigars.
“Anything else?”
“He had a scar.”
“Where?”
Sofia touched her own face.
“Here.”
From the corner of her mouth to her jaw.
Adrian stopped.
There was one man with that scar.
Anthony Moretti.
Vincent Vale’s closest friend.
Adrian’s godfather.
The man who had helped raise him after the fire.
Anthony had taught Adrian how to drive.
How to shoot.
How to negotiate.
How to survive.
When Vincent died, Anthony had stood beside Adrian at the funeral and told him:
Your father was my brother.
Anthony Moretti was now seventy-two.
Retired.
Wealthy.
Respected.
And expected at Adrian’s house for dinner the following Sunday.
Sofia saw Adrian’s expression.
“You know him.”
“I know someone who fits the description.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Ask him questions.”
Marco snorted.
Sofia looked from Marco to Adrian.
“What does that mean?”
Adrian’s eyes remained on the photograph from the fire.
“It means I’m going to give him one chance to tell me the truth.”
Sofia touched his hand.
“No.”
Adrian looked at her.
“If he was involved, he already knows I’m alive.”
“He may.”
“Then he’s had twenty-three years to prepare for you.”
“I’ve had twenty-three years too.”
“To prepare for what?”
Adrian closed the folder.
“To become someone he should have been afraid of.”
That afternoon, Marco discovered something else.
A bank account created three weeks before the fire.
The account belonged to Elena Vale.
Two million dollars had been deposited.
Then withdrawn the morning after the mansion burned.
The withdrawal had been authorized by a lawyer.
Daniel Mercer.
Elena’s older brother.
Adrian’s uncle.
The problem was Daniel Mercer had supposedly died in a boating accident twenty-four years ago.
Marco placed an old photograph beside the bank record.
Sofia stared at it.
Her face turned white.
“What?”
She pointed at Daniel Mercer.
“That’s him.”
Adrian leaned forward.
“Who?”
“The man who drove us away from the fire.”
Adrian felt the world tilt again.
His supposedly dead uncle had rescued Elena and Sofia.
Which meant the conspiracy had begun before the fire.
And someone inside the Vale family had helped three people disappear.
Then Sofia whispered something even more disturbing.
“I saw that man six months ago.”
Adrian stared at her.
“Where?”
“Outside a shelter in Brooklyn.”
“You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“He saw me.”
“And?”
“He ran.”
Adrian stood.
If Daniel Mercer was still alive, he would be seventy-four.
Adrian looked at Marco.
“Find him.”
Marco nodded.
Sofia stared at her mother’s ring.
“Adrian?”
“What?”
“There’s something I never told anyone.”
Her fingers trembled as she twisted the emerald.
“My mother told me this ring wasn’t just jewelry.”
Adrian frowned.
“What was it?”
“She said…”
May you like
Sofia looked up.
“She said the ring was the reason our father tried to burn us alive.”
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