Chapter 3 - THE CRIME BOSS RECOGNIZED MY BABY’S LOCKET—THEN HE TOLD ME MY MOTHER HAD BEEN HIDING A SECRET
For one long second, no one in the security room moved.
Snow drifted across the monitors in pale sheets. The woman outside stood beneath the gate lights, one hand resting on her cane, the other holding the open locket.
Hannah is not Annie.
The baby is.
The words repeated in my mind until they no longer sounded like language.
I tightened my arms around Lily.
She gave a soft protest and pressed her warm face against my neck.
Victor turned toward Marco.
“Bring her inside.”
Marco hesitated. “We still don’t know who she is.”
Victor’s voice remained low, but something in it changed.
“I do.”
He left the room before Marco could answer.
I followed him.
“Hannah,” Rosa said behind me.
I kept walking.
Every instinct told me to take Lily and run. Yet I had no idea where safety was anymore. My apartment had a broken radiator. The roads were buried beneath snow. Someone had photographed me outside the daycare, and now a woman who might have been dead for twenty-four years was standing outside claiming my daughter belonged to a name I had carried in a half-forgotten memory.
May you like
Annie.
Victor moved quickly through the foyer.
