Chapter 3 - The Girl Who Was Supposed to Disappear
“That’s because Nora isn’t my name.”
Dominic did not move.
Outside, rain struck the broken window in soft, relentless bursts.
“Say that again.”
“My birth name is Eleanor Vale.”
“And Nora?”
“The name on every document I’ve used since I was seventeen.”
Dominic looked down at the photograph.
The teenage girl suddenly made sense.
Not Nora’s sister.
Nora herself.
His anger arrived quietly.
“You’ve lived in my house.”
“Yes.”
“Slept beside me.”
“Yes.”
“You knew my enemies.”
“Some of them.”
“And you never thought this mattered?”
Nora flinched.
That tiny reaction affected him more than shouting would have.
“I thought it mattered too much.”
Dominic paced once across the destroyed rug.
“So your sister did not own the bracelet.”
“She did.”
He stopped.
Nora sank onto the arm of the wingback chair.
“My sister’s name was Claire.”
Dominic said nothing.
“Eleanor was me. Claire was fifteen months younger.”
Nora looked at the bracelet in his hand.
“Our mother bought two identical bracelets at a church fair. Mine had a green bird. Claire’s had blue.”
“What happened to yours?”
“I threw it into the Hudson when I became Nora.”
“And Claire?”
Nora swallowed.
“She vanished wearing hers.”
Dominic looked toward the hallway leading downstairs.
“Vivien walked into my house carrying your missing sister’s bracelet.”
“Yes.”
“And you still want me to believe today was about jealousy?”
“No.”
The answer surprised him.
Nora stood.
“That was what Vivien wanted you to believe.”
Another reversal.
Dominic felt it land.
“She deliberately acted like the furious former girlfriend.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because jealous women are dismissed.”
Nora’s mouth twisted bitterly.
“They’re called irrational. Obsessed. Embarrassing. People stop asking what they actually came for.”
Dominic thought back to Vivien’s threats over the past year.
Possessive.
Cruel.
But often strangely specific.
Taking back what belonged to her.
Destroying the thing that gave him peace.
He had interpreted every word through their failed relationship.
Perhaps that had been the point.
“What did she want from you?”
Nora looked toward the desk.
“A painting.”
Dominic blinked.
Of all possible answers, he had not expected that.
“What painting?”
“The Bellini reproduction I’ve been restoring in the east studio.”
“That ugly Madonna?”
Despite everything, Nora almost smiled.
“It’s a nineteenth-century copy of a fifteenth-century masterpiece.”
“It still looks sad.”
“She watched her son die.”
“That explains the expression.”
Nora’s almost-smile vanished.
“Vivien wanted the backing removed.”
Dominic understood art restoration only because Nora had made him listen to enough conversations over dinner.
“The backing canvas?”
“Yes.”
“What is inside it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I haven’t opened it.”
“Why not?”
“Because until today I didn’t know anything was there.”
Dominic studied her.
“Vivien told you?”
“She demanded it.”
Nora began reconstructing the confrontation.
Vivien had entered furious but controlled.
She accused Nora of stealing Dominic, then ordered Beatrice out.
When Beatrice refused, Vivien slapped her.
Nora struck Vivien once.
Vivien laughed.
Then she said something that changed everything.
You still hit like Eleanor.
Dominic felt cold.
“She called you by your real name.”
“Yes.”
“What did you do?”
“I asked where she got Claire’s bracelet.”
“And?”
“She said Arthur had kept souvenirs.”
Dominic’s stomach tightened.
“Then she told me the painting was mine before it was yours.”
He frowned.
“The Bellini came from the Marchetti collection.”
“Yes.”
Dominic remembered the acquisition.
Arthur had transferred several paintings during the dissolution of a joint investment partnership.
The Bellini copy had been almost worthless compared with the others.
Dominic had brought it home because Nora liked damaged things.
“She said there was something hidden beneath the lining,” Nora continued. “Something my father put there before he died.”
“Your father?”
Nora nodded.
Dominic knew almost nothing about Nora’s family.
She had said her parents died when she was young.
Technically true.
Perhaps deliberately incomplete.
“What did your father do?”
“He kept books.”
“Accountant?”
“For Arthur.”
Dominic’s expression changed.
Everything was widening.
“My father, Samuel Vale, handled Arthur’s legitimate construction companies. He discovered money moving through shell charities and union funds.”
Dominic understood immediately.
“He kept evidence.”
“Yes.”
“And Arthur killed him.”
“I never proved that.”
“But you believe it.”
“I watched my father leave our apartment with Arthur’s driver.”
Nora’s voice grew rough.
“He never came home.”
Dominic looked again at the photograph.
“Your mother?”
“Died eight months later.”
“How?”
“Officially? Pills.”
“And Claire disappeared?”
“Three days after my father.”
Dominic looked toward the stairs.
“You beat Vivien because she threatened Beatrice?”
“At first.”
“And afterward?”
Nora looked ashamed now.
A human reaction.
One Dominic desperately needed.
“After she showed me the bracelet, I lost control.”
There it was.
Not a cold assassin.
A woman who had just been handed a piece of her missing sister after twenty-four years.
Dominic’s anger shifted.
Not gone.
Changed.
“She fought back?”
“Very well.”
“So did you.”
“My father believed girls should know how to leave a bad room alive.”
Dominic almost smiled again.
Then Nora added, “After he disappeared, someone else finished teaching me.”
“Who?”
She did not answer.
Dominic noticed.
Another secret.
But one battle at a time.
“We’re opening the painting.”
“Tonight?”
“Now.”
Nora hesitated.
“If Vivien came for it, Arthur may already know where it is.”
Dominic headed for the door.
Nora caught his sleeve.
“Dominic.”
He looked back.
“If there is evidence inside that painting, this isn’t only about Arthur.”
“What does that mean?”
She stared at his Rolex.
The steel watch he wore every day.
A gift from his father when Dominic turned twenty-one.
“Take off your watch.”
He glanced down.
“Why?”
“Please.”
Something in her expression made him obey.
Nora turned the watch over.
On the case back was the Gallo crest.
A lion beneath three stars.
She ran her thumb over the lowest star.
Then pressed.
A tiny metal panel clicked loose.
Dominic stared at it.
He had owned the watch for seventeen years.
Inside the hidden compartment was a folded scrap of paper.
Neither spoke.
Dominic unfolded it.
The paper was yellow with age.
One line.
Written in the same black handwriting as the photograph.
SAMUEL VALE TRUSTED ANGELO GALLO. THAT WAS HIS LAST MISTAKE.
Dominic read it twice.
Angelo Gallo.
His father.
Dead twelve years.
He looked at Nora.
“You knew this was here?”
Her face said no.
And for once, Dominic believed her completely.
Then Leo’s voice came from the doorway.
“Boss.”
Dominic turned.
Leo looked unsettled.
“Vivien says you need to bring Nora downstairs.”
“Why?”
“She says she’ll only explain the bracelet to both of you.”
Dominic folded the note.
“And if we refuse?”
Leo’s expression tightened.
“She says ask Nora what happened at Saint Agnes on June fourteenth.”
Nora dropped into the chair.
Dominic looked at the date engraved inside Claire’s bracelet.
June 14, 2002.
“Nora?”
Her lips parted.
For several seconds, no sound came.
Then she whispered,
May you like
“That’s the night I watched my sister die.”
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