Chapter 1 - THE GIRL IN THE RAIN
Roman Bellandi’s engagement party stopped cold when nearly two hundred guests saw his maid, Grace Miller, barefoot in the October rain with seven-year-old Lucy wrapped beneath her coat. The terrace doors had been locked from inside, and Roman’s fiancée, Celeste Harrington, held the key. She claimed Grace had tried to take Lucy, but Roman immediately noticed something wrong: his frightened daughter was not crying, Grace had a fresh mark on her cheek, and Lucy refused to let Grace leave her side.
Grace eventually revealed that Lucy had gone outside because she was hiding something from Celeste. Lucy admitted she had entered Celeste’s room looking for her late mother’s necklace and discovered an old black cellphone. Before Celeste could take it, Lucy slipped the phone into Grace’s wet uniform.
The phone contained secret recordings implicating Celeste and Roman’s beloved aunt Patricia. They discussed removing Lucy from Roman’s custody, a mysterious family trust, altered records, and making Roman believe Lucy’s mother had lied to him.
Then Grace disappeared without her purse, keys, or car.
A photograph was found on Lucy’s pillow showing newborn Lucy with her mother—and Grace standing behind them seven years earlier. The date printed on the picture was November 3, fifteen days before Lucy’s official November 18 birth date.
Grace managed one desperate call.
“Check Lucy’s birth date.”
Before Roman could understand what it meant, Lucy appeared unharmed in the hallway holding the hand of an elderly man Roman had believed dead for twenty-five years.
His father.
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The old man warned Roman not to call security.
Because if Celeste learned he was alive, Grace might not survive long enough to explain why Lucy had two birth certificates.
