Maria stood across from Victoria in the police interview room.
Victoria did not move.
“I wish I were.”
“You expect me to believe our mother ordered someone to take you?”
“I expect you to read the file.”
Bennett placed the key into an evidence bag.
“What does it open?”
Victoria answered.
“A safe deposit box.”
“Where?”
“First Manhattan Private Bank.”
Alexander watched through the observation glass.
Beside him, Isabella looked ready to collapse.
“I never ordered Anna taken.”
Alexander turned.
“Then what did you order?”
Isabella stared at him.
He had learned to recognize the silence preceding another terrible truth.
“Isabella.”
She closed her eyes.
“I ordered her moved.”
Maria heard through the speaker.
She turned to face the glass.
“Bring her in.”
Bennett hesitated.
Maria repeated:
“Bring my mother in.”
Isabella entered.
Maria remained standing.
“Explain.”
Isabella sat opposite her daughters.
For the first time, Maria and Victoria were together not as maid and heiress.
Not enemies.
Twins.
Isabella looked at them.
“I discovered someone had accessed the maternity records.”
“Edward?”
“I didn’t know.”
“So you moved Anna?”
“I arranged for a nurse to take her to another hospital temporarily.”
Maria’s jaw tightened.
“Why only Anna?”
Isabella began crying.
“Because your medical records had already been duplicated. I believed whoever was watching us had identified Anna but not you.”
Victoria laughed bitterly.
“You chose her.”
“No.”
“You protected Maria.”
“I tried to protect both of you.”
“You sent me away!”
“For one night!”
Isabella’s voice broke.
“It was supposed to be one night.”
Silence.
“The nurse never arrived.”
Victoria’s anger faltered.
Isabella continued.
“She disappeared with you.”
Maria whispered, “Who was she?”
“Eleanor Price.”
Alexander’s face changed behind the glass.
The name had appeared repeatedly in Edward’s network.
Victoria stared.
“Richard told me Eleanor saved me.”
“She stole you.”
Isabella sobbed.
“I searched everywhere.”
Victoria looked away.
For the first time, the woman who had once threatened Maria seemed small.
Not innocent.
But wounded.
Maria sat.
“Why did you hate me?”
Victoria’s eyes filled.
“Because every photograph Richard showed me had you with Mom.”
Maria felt the words like a knife.
“He told me she went home to you.”
Victoria wiped her tears.
“He told me I was the child nobody wanted.”
Maria remembered Victoria’s cruelty.
Her obsession with status.
Her terror of losing Alexander.
Her contempt for weakness.
None of it excused what she had done.
But suddenly Maria understood where the poison had entered.
“Richard made you believe love was something you had to steal.”
Victoria nodded.
“And Edward taught me that power was the only way nobody could abandon me again.”
Maria looked at her.
“You still chose to hurt people.”
Victoria closed her eyes.
“I know.”
“You almost hit Evelyn.”
“I know.”
“You tried to destroy me.”
“I know.”
Maria’s voice softened without becoming forgiving.
“Being hurt doesn’t make what you did acceptable.”
Victoria nodded.
“I know.”
Bennett entered.
“We have authorization to access the safe deposit box.”
At the bank, investigators opened it.
Inside were three objects.
A birth certificate.
A cassette tape.
And a sealed letter addressed:
TO MY DAUGHTERS — MARIA AND ANNA.
Isabella stared.
“That’s not my handwriting.”
Maria froze.
“Then whose?”
Isabella whispered:
“Lucia’s.”
Alexander stepped closer.
His biological mother.
Bennett played the cassette.
Static filled the room.
Then Lucia Santos spoke.
“If Maria and Anna are hearing this, then Isabella’s plan failed.”
Everyone froze.
Lucia continued.
“Edward knows the children are connected to the evidence archive. Richard has agreed to help him.”
Alexander closed his eyes.
His mother’s voice.
For the first time.
Lucia continued.
“I have hidden the master ledger where neither man can reach it without the two flower keys.”
Maria touched her pendant.
Victoria stared.
Two pendants.
Two twins.
“The keys were never meant to control money,” Lucia said.
“They open the evidence vault.”
Alexander looked toward Isabella.
She nodded.
Lucia continued.
“If one child is taken, the other must be protected.”
Maria began crying.
Victoria stared at the floor.
Then Lucia said something unexpected.
“Ethan is with me.”
Alexander stopped breathing.
“He does not understand why we are running. He is thirteen years old. He deserves a childhood, not this war.”
Alexander covered his mouth.
Maria reached for him.
Lucia’s voice softened.
“Ethan, if you ever hear this, I need you to know something.”
Alexander closed his eyes.
“I did not leave you.”
Tears escaped.
“I did not choose the ledger over you.”
His shoulders shook.
“I am coming back.”
Alexander bowed his head.
Maria wrapped her arms around him.
Lucia continued.
“But if I fail, Isabella knows where the final vault is.”
Everyone turned to face Isabella.
She went pale.
Maria stared.
“You know?”
Isabella whispered, “I knew once.”
“What does that mean?”
“The location was encoded.”
“Where?”
“In a lullaby.”
Marcus froze.
“The moon over the river.”
Thomas’s missing son.
Daniel’s childhood memory.
Lucia’s recording continued.
“The first child remembers the song.”
Marcus stopped breathing.
“The second remembers the road.”
Alexander stared.
“The third carries the key.”
Maria touched her pendant.
Victoria touched the empty place where hers should have been.
Then the cassette ended.
Bennett looked toward Victoria.
“Where is your pendant?”
Victoria’s expression changed.
“Richard took it when I was sixteen.”
Marcus immediately searched Richard Sterling’s seized property.
Nothing.
Alexander frowned.
“Then Edward has it.”
Victoria shook her head.
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Richard gave it to someone else.”
“Who?”
Victoria looked at Maria.
“Sofia.”
Maria froze.
“My sister?”
Victoria nodded.
“The wooden box.”
Maria remembered.
The box Isabella had given Sofia.
The box Peter Lawson had tried to steal.
The box that contained photographs and letters.
Bennett immediately called the rehabilitation center.
No answer.
Maria tried Sofia.
Nothing.
Again.
Voicemail.
Her face drained of color.
“Call security.”
Marcus did.
His expression changed.
“The officers assigned to Sofia’s room are unconscious.”
Maria stood.
“No.”
Marcus continued.
“Sofia is gone.”
Alexander grabbed his coat.
Then Maria’s phone vibrated.
A photograph appeared.
Sofia sat inside a vehicle.
Frightened but alive.
Around her neck hung a silver five-petaled pendant.
A message followed:
ONE TWIN HAS THE FIRST KEY.
THE OTHER KEY IS WITH SOFIA.
BRING MARIA AND VICTORIA TO THE RIVER.
OR THE WRONG SISTER DIES.
Maria stared at Victoria.
For the first time, the twins understood the same thing.
Edward had stopped trying to steal identities.
Now he was forcing the entire broken family toward the place where the truth had been hidden from the beginning.
TO BE CONTINUED…
