Chapter 1 - THE BLOOD ON THE WHITE GLOVE
My name is Nora Bennett, and on the night of Gabriel DeLuca’s engagement dinner, I was supposed to be invisible.
Instead, blood exposed everything.
Hours earlier, someone had shoved me down a service staircase after whispering, “You should’ve left the drawer closed.” My shoulder was badly injured, but I hid the pain because my family depended on my paycheck.
Gabriel’s fiancée, Victoria Prescott, knew I was hurt.
She also knew why.
She forced me to serve sixty guests while carrying a heavy silver tray, even squeezing my injured shoulder when I begged her to stop.
But Gabriel noticed blood soaking through my white glove.
In front of everyone, he ended my shift, called his physician, and began asking questions Victoria clearly didn’t want answered. He soon discovered that both Victoria and I had lied about where I had fallen.
I finally showed Gabriel what I had discovered inside a hidden compartment in his late mother Elena’s desk: a brass crescent-moon key and an old hospital nursery card connected to the date of Victoria’s birth.
Faint writing on the card revealed something worse.
Two infants.
A transfer at 2:13 a.m.
And a payment of $250,000.
Then an elderly former maternity nurse appeared carrying a second matching key. She claimed Rebecca Bennett—the woman I had always called Mom—had not given birth to me.
Before she could explain, the mansion lights went out.
The nurse vanished.
So did Victoria’s mother, Evelyn.
What remained was a photograph of two newborn girls lying side by side.
One blanket said PRESCOTT.
The other had BENNETT crossed out.
Gabriel was about to tell me what had been written over it when Victoria saw the photograph.
Her face collapsed.
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And she screamed the sentence that changed everything.
“NO—SHE WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO FIND OUT WHO SHE IS!”
