Chapter 3: The Six Missing Years
The security guards moved toward the doors, but the groom raised one hand.
“Leave them open.”
“Daniel,” the bride said, “these children could be part of a scheme.”
Daniel faced her.
“Then why did you order the doors locked, Vanessa?”
“To protect you.”
“From a seven-year-old girl?”
Lily stepped back and tightened her arms around the toddler.
Daniel lowered himself until they were eye to eye.
“Your sister is heavy.
May I hold her?”
“No,” Lily whispered.
“Mama said not to let strangers take Rose.”
Daniel flinched at the word strangers.
“Then keep holding her.
I won’t touch either of you without permission.”
Vanessa folded her arms.
“Are we really stopping our wedding because someone trained a child to say ‘Daddy’?”
Daniel broke the envelope’s seal.
“Don’t read that here,” Vanessa said.
He looked up.
“Why not?”
“Because this is our wedding.”
“No.
This became something else the moment you recognized that photograph.”
Daniel unfolded the letter.
The first line made his knees weaken.
“Daniel, if Lily reaches you, then Vanessa has finally failed to keep us apart.”
Vanessa reached for it again.
Daniel stepped away.
He continued aloud.
“I was pregnant when your father offered me money to disappear.
I refused.
Two days later, Vanessa came to my apartment with copies of private messages only someone inside your office could have obtained.”
“That’s a lie,” Vanessa said.
Daniel kept reading.
“She told me you had chosen your family name over me.
She showed me a letter carrying your signature and said you never wanted to see me or the baby.”
Daniel stopped.
“I never wrote such a letter.”
“You don’t remember every document you signed,” Vanessa replied.
“Your assistants handled hundreds.”
“This wasn’t a business document.
It rejected my child.”
Vanessa turned toward the guests.
“Can’t everyone see what this is?
That woman waited until Daniel was marrying into my family, then sent children to demand money.”
“I didn’t come for money,” Lily said.
Her small voice carried farther than Vanessa’s.
“Then what do you want?” Vanessa demanded.
“I want my mama.”
Daniel crouched again.
“Where is she?”
Lily’s mouth trembled.
“She went to meet a lady who promised to help us.
She told me to wait at the bus station with Rose.”
“And she didn’t return?”
Lily shook her head.
“How long ago?”
“Yesterday morning.”
Daniel pulled out his phone.
“I’m calling the authorities.”
“No!” Lily caught his sleeve.
“Mama said Vanessa has friends there.”
A low murmur moved through the hall.
Vanessa’s father, Victor Hale, rose from the front row.
“Vanessa,” he said, “what did you do?”
“Sit down, Dad.”
“That was not an answer.”
Vanessa’s smile disappeared.
“I protected Daniel from a woman who had been following him for years.”
Daniel held up the letter.
“Anna didn’t follow me.
I loved her.”
“You thought you did.”
“You told me she took money from my father and moved abroad.”
“She did.”
“Then explain the photograph.”
“It proves they knew each other.
Nothing more.”
Lily shifted Rose to one arm and searched beneath the blanket.
“Mama gave me this too.”
She held out a cheap mobile phone with a cracked screen.
“It only calls one number,” Lily said.
“Mama told me to press it when Daddy opened the letter.”
Daniel pressed the button and placed the phone on speaker.
It rang twice.
A woman answered in a frightened whisper.
“Lily?
Are you safe?”
Daniel gripped the edge of the altar.
“Anna?”
The voice stopped breathing.
May you like
Then Anna whispered the words Vanessa had spent six years making sure Daniel would never hear.
“Daniel, she found us again.”
