Chapter 9 – THE PHOTOGRAPH IN THE JOURNAL

I stared at the photograph resting on the carpet.

It wasn’t a picture of Arthur, or Adrian, or anyone from the DeLuca family.

It was a picture of my mother.

She was young, standing in front of the Halsted Street bakery, laughing. But what made my blood run cold was the person standing next to her, holding her hand.

It was Celeste’s father, Elias Romano.

“Claire?”

I jumped as Adrian walked into the room, holding a stack of legal files. He saw the color drained from my face and immediately dropped the files, rushing to my side.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, looking down at the picture.

I handed it to him, my hands shaking. “That’s my mother. With Elias.”

Adrian turned the photograph over. On the back, written in Elias’s distinct, sprawling handwriting, were three words: Our secret daughter.

My mind spun violently. If Elias was my mother’s lover… if he was the one who had hidden her away…

“Arthur Vance wasn’t my sister’s father,” I breathed, the horrific realization settling in. “The birth certificate in the basement was a fake. Arthur planted it to mess with my head.”

Adrian looked at me, his dark eyes wide with shock. “Claire… if Elias is your father… that means Celeste is your half-sister.”

The room spun. The woman who had treated me like dirt, who had tried to destroy Rosa, who had nearly cost me everything—was my own blood.

Before I could process the shock, Adrian’s phone buzzed. He answered it on speaker.

It was Mr. Keene, the family attorney. “Adrian. We just audited Elias’s offshore accounts. We found a massive recurring wire transfer over the last twenty years. It was being sent to an account under the name Claire Bennett.”

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