Chapter 4 - THE LOCKET FROM THE PAST
"Your mother killed mine."
Gabriel's words landed between them like broken glass.
Harper pulled the blanket tighter around herself.
"My mother died when I was fourteen."
"I know."
"Then why would you say something like that?"
Gabriel placed the locket on her bedside table.
"Because eleven years ago, someone told my family that Elena Monroe was responsible for Victoria Rossi's death."
Harper stared at him.
Her mother had worked as a bookkeeper for a wealthy family before dying in what police called a highway accident.
Harper remembered the funeral.
The closed casket.
The strangers who stood at the back of the church.
And the envelope her mother had given her two days before the crash.
An envelope she had never opened.
"You're lying."
Gabriel shook his head.
"I wish I were."
Harper reached for her phone.
She searched through old photographs until she found one taken at her mother's birthday.
Elena stood in their small kitchen, laughing while Noah, then a toddler, held a spoon covered in frosting.
"Look at her," Harper whispered. "Does she look like a murderer?"
Gabriel studied the photograph.
"No."
"Then why did your family accuse her?"
"Because she disappeared the same night my mother died."
"She didn't disappear. She was killed."
Gabriel's expression changed.
"According to the police report, Elena survived another forty-eight hours."
Harper's stomach turned.
"That's impossible."
Gabriel moved closer.
"My family's records say Elena met with my father after the explosion that killed my mother."
Harper shook her head repeatedly.
"No. My mother died in a car accident. I saw the police come to our house."
Gabriel took out an old photograph.
Two women stood beside a summerhouse garden.
One had dark hair and wore an emerald dress.
The other had Harper's mother's unmistakable smile.
"That's Victoria," Gabriel said, indicating the first woman. "And that's Elena."
Harper studied their expressions.
They weren't standing like an employer and employee.
Their arms were linked.
They were laughing.
On the back, someone had written:
The sisters we chose to become.
Harper touched the handwriting.
"It's hers."
"Your mother's?"
"Yes."
Gabriel's phone vibrated.
Leo had sent an image recovered from a hidden camera at the lake house.
It showed Thomas Vale entering the building.
But someone else followed him.
A woman in a long beige coat.
Her face was partially hidden beneath a hood.
Harper stared at the image.
Then she began to cry.
Gabriel looked alarmed.
"What is it?"
Harper pointed at the woman's hand.
A distinctive crescent-shaped scar crossed her thumb.
May you like
Her mother had carried that same scar since childhood.
And the woman in the photograph was wearing Elena Monroe's wedding ring.
