Chapter 2 - THE PHOTOGRAPH MY MOTHER HID FOR TWENTY-FOUR YEARS
My mother had known Nathan Drake.
That fact felt impossible.
I sat alone in the hospital hallway, reading her letter again and again.
Nathan had been thirteen when I was born.
My mother had been a struggling young cleaner.
What could possibly connect them?
The letter continued.
Before you were born, I worked nights at the Drake family estate. I cleaned rooms, washed dishes, and learned very quickly that rich people often say dangerous things around people they consider invisible.
I swallowed.
That sounded exactly like Mom.
People had underestimated her every day of her life.
Apparently, some of them had paid for that mistake.
Inside the envelope was an old photograph.
A beautiful dark-haired woman stood beside my mother on the steps of an enormous house.
Beside them was a boy.
Nathan.
Younger.
Thinner.
Smiling.
I had never seen him smile like that.
On the back, my mother had written:
Evelyn Drake. Nathan’s mother. My friend.
Everyone in Chicago knew the story.
Evelyn Drake had died in a car accident more than two decades earlier.
Nathan rarely spoke about her.
According to old newspaper articles, her vehicle had gone through a guardrail during a storm.
But my mother’s letter told a different story.
Evelyn was afraid of Vincent Drake.
I knew that name.
Vincent was Nathan’s uncle.
His father’s younger brother.
After Nathan’s parents died, Vincent had helped him rebuild the Drake empire.
Business magazines called him Nathan’s closest adviser.
People in Chicago called him the only man Nathan trusted completely.
My mother had written:
Evelyn discovered Vincent was stealing from the family and using Drake Harbor shipments for things Samuel Drake never approved. She planned to expose him.
The next sentence had been underlined three times.
She never made it to the police.
My breath caught.
Then I reached the final paragraph.
Bella, Evelyn’s death was not an accident.
I covered my mouth.
My mother had carried this secret for twenty-four years.
Why?
Why had she never gone to the police?
Then I saw the final line.
I witnessed what happened that night, but I was not the only witness. Your father saw it too.
My father.
The man Mom had always told me was gone.
The man whose name she almost never said.
Beneath the letter was a second photograph.
Mom stood beside a tall blond man I had never seen.
He was holding a newborn baby.
Me.
On the photograph, my mother had written:
Daniel Carter. Your father. He did not abandon us.
May you like
Then came five words that changed my entire childhood.
Vincent Drake made him disappear.
