Chapter 2 - THE SILVER LOCKET
The silence in the dining room was so heavy I could hear my own pulse.
Twenty high-society guests sat frozen in their velvet chairs.
Dominic didn’t look at any of them. His gaze was locked on Vanessa.
"I'm going to ask you once," Dominic said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, terrifying whisper. "Did you go to her hospital room?"
Vanessa’s lips trembled. The haughty aristocrat from three minutes ago was gone.
"Dominic, be reasonable," she stammered, backing up against the mahogany buffet. "Your father... your father sent me. He knew you’d ruin your life for a waitress. I was trying to protect your legacy!"
"My legacy," Dominic repeated. He looked down at Noah, who was still clutching my apron, then back to Vanessa. "You told her I didn't want my own child."
"She was nobody!" Vanessa shrieked, panic breaking her composure. "And she still is! Do you think you can just cancel our wedding for a maid? My family will destroy your operations in the South Side!"
I pulled Noah back a step. I didn’t want him hearing this.
But I needed to speak. Five years of silence and struggling to pay rent while the Moretti family lived in absolute luxury boiled over.
"She didn’t just come to the hospital," I said, my voice shaking. "She brought a document. A relinquishment of parental rights. She said if I didn't sign it, your father’s lawyers would take my baby the moment he was born and I would never see him again."
Dominic turned to me. The betrayal in his eyes was agonizing. "You signed it?"
"I signed a blank piece of paper because she said it was the only way you'd let us live in peace!" I cried. "She told me you were waiting in the car downstairs. That you couldn't even bear to look at me!"
Dominic closed his eyes. His jaw clenched so hard I thought it might snap.
When he opened his eyes, he looked at his head of security, Marco, who was standing by the double doors.
"Clear the room," Dominic ordered. "Everyone goes home. Now."
Chairs scraped frantically against the marble floor. Within sixty seconds, the elite of Chicago had fled like frightened mice.
Vanessa tried to follow them, but Marco blocked the door.
"Not you," Dominic said.
He walked slowly toward her. Vanessa shrank back.
"I was protecting you!" she sobbed. "I did what your father paid me to do! But I didn't forge the paperwork alone, Dominic!"
My breath caught.
Vanessa pointed a trembling, manicured finger at me. "Ask her how I knew exactly which hospital she was hiding in! Ask her how I got past the nurses without being family!"
I froze. I had been admitted under a fake name. Only one person in the world knew where I was that night.
Vanessa reached into her designer clutch and threw something onto the table next to the wooden horse.
It was a silver locket. Tarnished, but distinctly familiar.
My heart stopped.
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It was my younger sister’s locket. The one I had given her for her sixteenth birthday.
"Your own blood sold you out for fifty thousand dollars, Claire," Vanessa spat, a cruel smile forming through her tears. "We didn't hunt you down. Your sister delivered you to us."
