Chapter 2: The Photograph on the Kitchen Table
Julian was still at the hospital when his phone rang at 2 a.m.
It was Marcus, his head of security.
"We pulled the ballroom footage," Marcus said.
"You need to see it before anyone else does."
Julian stepped into the corridor.
"Tell me now."
"The champagne tray was prepared for two flutes.
Yours and hers.
Someone switched the glasses before Nora carried the tray out.
We can see the hand on the footage, but not the face."
Julian's jaw tightened.
"Whose hand?"
Silence.
"Marcus."
"It looks like Thomas, sir."
Julian said nothing for a long moment.
Thomas Bell.
Thirty-two years.
The man who had carried Julian's father's coffin.
Back inside the estate, Nora sat in the staff kitchen with Lily asleep across her lap.
She had not moved in an hour.
When Julian's second security officer walked in and placed a photograph on the table in front of her, her face went completely still.
It was a photo of Claire Arden.
"Mr.
DeLuca wants to know," the officer said quietly, "how long you have known who Lily's father is."
Nora looked down at her daughter's sleeping face.
Her hand moved to the child's hair.
May you like
She did not answer.
But her silence was louder than anything she could have said.
