Chapter 2 - The Daughter in the Photograph
Adrian stared at Clara as though he were seeing her for the first time.
The young woman stood beside his mother’s wheelchair, her face drained of color.
Outside the office windows, rain struck the glass in hard, uneven bursts.
“What does she mean?” Adrian asked.
Clara swallowed.
Victoria answered for her.
“Your father knew Clara’s mother.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
“That could mean anything.”
“It doesn’t.”
Victoria reached into the small bag hanging from her wheelchair and removed an old photograph.
She placed it on Adrian’s desk.
Adrian picked it up.
His father stood beside a young woman outside a small lakeside cottage. Richard Blackwood looked perhaps forty, much younger than Adrian remembered him during his final years.
The woman beside him was beautiful.
Dark blond hair.
Gentle eyes.
One hand rested over her stomach.
She was pregnant.
Adrian turned the photograph over.
Three words had been written on the back.
Eleanor and our child.
His eyes moved slowly toward Clara.
“No.”
Clara said nothing.
Victoria closed her eyes.
“Her mother was Eleanor Bennett.”
Adrian dropped the photograph onto the desk.
“My father had an affair?”
“For years.”
“And you knew?”
“I discovered it later.”
Adrian laughed once, but there was no humor in it.
“My father cheated on you, fathered another child, and somehow nobody thought this was information I needed?”
“Clara is not Richard’s daughter.”
Adrian stopped.
Clara looked sharply at Victoria.
“Mrs. Blackwood.”
But Victoria continued.
“Richard wanted everyone to believe she was.”
Adrian’s confusion became anger.
“Start making sense.”
Victoria looked suddenly exhausted.
“Eleanor worked for your father.”
“In what capacity?”
“She kept his financial records.”
Adrian became still.
That meant something.
Richard Blackwood had trusted almost nobody with his real books.
The Blackwood empire had been built from legitimate real estate, shipping, hotels and private security companies, but beneath those businesses had once existed another network—one Adrian had spent years dismantling or burying after inheriting control.
Richard’s private records had been legendary.
And supposedly destroyed.
“Eleanor discovered something,” Victoria continued. “Something your father could not allow anyone else to see.”
“What?”
“I never knew all of it.”
Adrian turned toward Clara.
“But you do.”
Clara finally met his eyes.
“My mother kept evidence.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
Adrian moved around the desk.
Clara instinctively stepped backward.
Victoria immediately positioned her wheelchair between them.
“Adrian.”
He stopped.
That small movement struck him harder than he expected.
His own mother was protecting Clara from him.
“I’m asking questions.”
“You’re interrogating her.”
“She entered my home using a false reason.”
“I applied for a housekeeping position,” Clara said. “I never lied about my name.”
“You knew who we were.”
“Yes.”
“You knew my father.”
“I knew what he did.”
Adrian stared at her.
“What did he do?”
Clara’s voice changed.
The fear disappeared.
“He destroyed my family.”
Silence.
“My father’s name was Thomas Bennett,” she said. “He was an accountant. My mother worked with him before Richard hired her. When she discovered irregular transfers inside Blackwood companies, she told my father.”
Adrian listened.
“Three weeks later, my father died.”
“How?”
“A car accident.”
Adrian’s eyes narrowed.
Clara gave a bitter smile.
“That’s what the police report said.”
Victoria whispered, “Richard arranged it.”
Adrian turned toward her.
“You know that?”
“I heard him order it.”
The room seemed to shrink.
Victoria’s hands began trembling.
“I was outside his study. Richard was talking to Marcus Vale.”
That name struck Adrian immediately.
Marcus Vale had been Richard Blackwood’s closest lieutenant.
He had also been Adrian’s godfather.
And after Richard died, Marcus had remained one of Adrian’s most trusted advisers.
Adrian looked at his mother.
“You’re saying Marcus killed Thomas Bennett?”
“I’m saying your father told Marcus to make Thomas disappear.”
Clara’s eyes glistened.
“My mother ran after that.”
Victoria nodded.
“Richard found her.”
“What happened?” Adrian asked.
Victoria looked at Clara.
Clara answered.
“He threatened to kill me.”
Adrian felt something cold settle inside him.
“My mother gave him the original financial files in exchange for my life. At least, that’s what Richard thought.”
“What do you mean?”
“She kept copies.”
Adrian’s gaze sharpened.
“Where?”
“I told you. I don’t know.”
“You came here looking for them.”
“Yes.”
“And my mother knew?”
“Not at first.”
Victoria sighed.
“She told me three months ago.”
Adrian walked toward the window.
His mind was rearranging twenty years of history.
His father.
Marcus.
Missing records.
A murdered accountant.
A frightened woman.
And Clara.
“What happened to Eleanor?”
Clara stared at the floor.
“She died when I was twelve.”
“Natural causes?”
“No.”
Adrian slowly turned.
Clara’s voice became almost a whisper.
“She was found in our apartment with enough pills in her body for the police to call it suicide.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“My mother was terrified of dying. She spent her entire life trying to stay alive long enough to protect me.”
Victoria reached for Clara.
Clara took her hand.
“She left me one thing,” Clara said.
“What?”
“A letter.”
Adrian waited.
“In it she wrote, ‘If anything happens to me, go back to the house where Victoria first learned the truth.’”
Adrian looked at his mother.
Victoria went pale.
“What house?”
She did not answer immediately.
Then Adrian saw recognition appear in her eyes.
“The lake house.”
“What lake house?”
Victoria’s voice trembled.
“Your father had a property outside Lake Geneva. He sold it after Thomas Bennett died.”
Adrian picked up his phone.
“Then we find the current owner.”
“No.”
Clara’s voice stopped him.
Adrian looked at her.
“My mother also wrote something else.”
Clara reached beneath her blouse and pulled out a thin chain.
A tiny brass key hung from it.
“She told me never to use this unless Victoria Blackwood was still alive.”
Victoria stared at the key.
Her expression changed completely.
She recognized it.
“Oh, God.”
“What?” Adrian demanded.
Victoria began backing her wheelchair away from the desk.
“That isn’t a house key.”
Clara looked down at it.
“Then what is it?”
Victoria whispered two words.
“Richard’s vault.”
At that exact moment, someone knocked on the office door.
Three slow knocks.
Adrian looked toward it.
Before he could answer, the handle turned.
Marcus Vale stepped inside.
He was seventy now, silver-haired and impeccably dressed, carrying the same calm expression Adrian had trusted since childhood.
His eyes moved from Adrian...
to Victoria...
to Clara...
and finally to the brass key hanging from Clara’s neck.
For one fraction of a second, Marcus’s smile disappeared.
May you like
Then it returned.
“Am I interrupting something?”
