Chapter 96
The Meeting She Enters
Camille Laurent waited outside the gate in a red coat.
She looked nothing like the woman in my grandfather’s photograph, and everything like the person I had imagined after reading her name in the memo. Older, thinner, with dark hair cut at her jaw and a white scar along her left cheek.
She did not look at my father.
She looked at Amara.
“You’re pregnant,” Camille said when we reached the gate.
“Yes.”
“Then you need to leave.”
Amara did not move. “You came here to tell us that?”
“I came because Marcus called me.”
Priya stood behind us with her phone recording. “Do you consent to being recorded?”
Camille studied her. “If I say no, will you still remember what I say?”
“Yes.”
“Then record it.”
The gate opened. Camille entered without waiting for permission.
My father said her name like a warning.
She turned toward him. “You can stop pretending I am a matter you settled.”
His face lost color.
“Where is Mara?” I asked.
Camille looked at me for the first time. “You have your grandfather’s eyes.”
“Everyone keeps saying that.”
“He wanted you to see what he had hidden.”
“He hid it from me.”
“He hid it from everyone. That was the problem.”
She opened the folder. Inside was a birth certificate with the redaction removed. The child’s full name was Mara Elise Laurent. The father’s line remained blank.
“Mara is my daughter,” Camille said. “She was never adopted. She was never legally surrendered. The Sterling family paid a guardian to keep her away from me after I refused the marriage clause.”
Amara’s hand closed around mine.
“Where is she now?”
“In Chicago.”
The answer seemed too near.
“She came to the house three months ago,” Rose said.
Camille nodded. “She wanted the truth about her father.”
My father stepped forward. “You are exploiting my son’s uncertainty.”
Camille laughed once. It held no humor.
“You threatened to take my daughter if I spoke. You called her a minor in every file so no one would have to say her name. Now you are worried about exploitation?”
Marcus’s car had vanished. That was the first time I understood he had not left to escape us. He had left to reach Mara first.
“Where is she?” I asked again.
Camille looked past me, toward the house. “She was here because she found the same clause. She believed the family might have altered her records to hide who her father was.”
“Do you know who he is?”
She looked at my father.
The silence spread through the hall.
My father said, “That is irrelevant.”
“It is not irrelevant to Mara,” Camille replied.
My chest tightened. “Is he a Sterling?”
Camille’s fingers closed around the certificate.
“Your grandfather believed he was.”
My father said my name. “Adrian.”
I ignored him.
“Who?”
Camille pulled a second document from the folder. It was a private DNA report, dated two months earlier. The tested subject was identified only by initials.
The result was a match.
The initials were A.S.
Amara looked at me.
I stared at the page.
My father’s initials.
“That is not possible,” he said.
Camille folded the report. “It is the reason Marcus has been trying to make your daughter the next condition. He needs the family to believe the past was an isolated failure.”
“Mara is my half-sister?”
Camille did not answer.
She did not need to.
At the end of the drive, a black car turned through the open gate.
Marcus had not gone far.
Camille grabbed Amara’s arm.
“If he reaches Mara first, he will use the same clause on her that he is preparing to use on your baby.”
Amara lifted her chin. “Then tell us where to go.”
Camille gave her an address.
Before we left, Priya asked Camille to sit in the library and give a formal statement. Camille refused the chair my father offered and stood beneath the portrait of my grandfather.
“He made a mistake,” she said. “He believed secrecy could buy time.”
“What did he promise you?” I asked.
“That Mara would remain with me. That the family would not interfere if I withdrew from the engagement.”
“And then?”
“Marcus arrived with two lawyers. They said the clause gave them authority over any child connected to the Sterling line.”
“Before Mara was born?”
“The clause was not written for Mara. It was written after she became inconvenient.”
The distinction made me sick.
Amara asked, “Why did you leave Mara in the house?”
Camille’s fingers tightened around the folder. “I did not. I took her with me. They found us six months later.”
“Then how was she here?”
“Your grandfather brought her back after I was arrested.”
I stared at her. “You were arrested?”
“For taking my daughter from the guardian the family paid.”
My father said, “The arrest was lawful.”
Camille turned toward him. “The charge was dropped when your lawyer discovered the guardian had no valid order.”
He did not deny it.
“Why did you not go public?” I asked.
“Because Marcus showed me the trust amendment. He said if I spoke, Mara would be declared a ward of the Sterling family. He said your grandfather would make sure she never saw me again.”
“Did he have that authority?”
“He had money. At the time, that was close enough.”
Priya recorded the statement. “Where is Mara now?”
“She left the apartment two hours ago.”
“With whom?”
Camille looked at me. “She said she was going to meet the man whose initials were on her medical file.”
“My father.”
“She believes so.”
My father stepped toward the desk. “This is a fabrication.”
Camille held up the DNA report. “Then explain why your private physician’s office ordered a test under the name A.S.”
He looked at Marcus’s empty place near the window.
That was when I understood the man had not merely hidden the past. He had been managing the evidence of it for years.
Amara reached for my hand. “We need to go.”
Camille nodded. “Mara will not trust you if you arrive with the family.”
I looked at my father. “I am not going with them.”
“Adrian.”
“You can stay here and protect the company.”
He stepped toward me. “You do not know what she wants.”
“Neither did you, when you made her disappear.”
The words left no room for apology.
Camille opened the gate from the security panel. “The apartment is six blocks from the lake. Mara knows the back entrance.”
We crossed the drive. Amara stopped beside the car.
“One condition,” she said.
“Anything.”
“You do not decide whether Mara is your sister before she tells you. You do not promise to save her. You ask what she wants.”
I nodded.
Camille watched us from the steps. “That is the first thing your grandfather should have done.”
We drove toward the lake.
Behind us, the Sterling house closed its gates.
Camille remained on the steps until the car reached the street. In the rearview mirror, she looked smaller than she had at the gate, but not less determined.
“The address,” I said. “Why the old apartment?”
“Because Camille lived there after she left the Sterling house,” Amara replied. “It is where the first record was created.”
“And Mara is there?”
“We do not know.”
The uncertainty should have frightened me into speed. Instead, it made me slow down. The last thing Mara needed was another Sterling man arriving with a conclusion already prepared.
I called the apartment number Camille had given us. No one answered.
Then a text appeared from an unknown number.
If you come, come without lawyers.
Amara read it over my shoulder.
“We are not leaving Priya behind,” she said.
I typed a reply.
She is here to keep the record accurate.
The answer came almost immediately.
Then keep her outside.
The car turned toward the lake.
It was the apartment where the first bride had disappeared.