Chapter 2 - THE SILVER LOCKET
“What did you say?” Victor’s voice dropped, stripped of its previous irritation, replaced by an icy tension.
Kiara stepped back from the broken shards of teacups, her voice barely above a whisper. “Her name was Clara. She lived at St. Jude’s Children’s Home in upstate New York. She was older than me, but nobody ever forgot her eyes. Those same gray-blue eyes.”
Victor felt the floor beneath his shoes tilt. “That is impossible. My sister Helena vanished from Central Park when she was six years old. In 1996. The police searched the entire eastern seaboard. You weren’t even old enough to remember.”
“I was five when she aged out of St. Jude’s,” Kiara insisted, her hands gripping her apron. “Clara was twelve. She looked out for the smaller children. She kept one thing in her pocket every single day—a tarnished silver locket shaped like a swallow. She said her brother gave it to her before the bad men took her to the train.”
Rose Whitaker let out a stifled gasp, her hand flying to her chest.
Victor turned toward the elderly housekeeper, his jaw clenched tight. “Rose. What is it?”
Rose’s eyes darted toward the library, where the Alliance family archives remained locked behind glass. “Victor... when Helena was four, your grandfather brought two swallow pendants back from London. One in gold for you, one in silver for her. The police never released that detail to the press to weed out false ransom callers.”
The room seemed to shrink. Victor reached inside his shirt, pulling out a delicate gold chain holding a worn gold swallow. A cold sweat broke out along his spine. For twenty-eight years, he had believed his little sister was dead at the bottom of the Hudson or buried in an unmarked ditch.
“Where is she now, Kiara?” Victor stepped forward, his cold exterior cracking. “Tell me where Clara went.”
Kiara looked at the portrait, then back to the powerful man before her. “She was placed with a foster family in Pennsylvania when she turned twelve. But sir... the woman who brought Clara to the orphanage wasn’t a stranger. Clara told me the woman drove a green town car with an Alliance crest on the keychain.”
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Victor stared at Kiara, the breath knocked from his lungs. The only green town car belonging to the estate in 1996 had been assigned to one person: his late father’s trusted business partner and current family trust executor, Raymond Sterling.
Before Victor could speak, the tall grandfather clock in the foyer chimed three. Downstairs, the heavy oak front door clicked open, and the distinctive tap of a cane echoed across the marble—Raymond Sterling had arrived unannounced for his weekly review of the trust.
