“Seraphine was Elara’s aunt. Our family believed she was gone when Elara was still young.”
I looked again at the little girl standing beside Elara.
“Then the child must have been Elara’s cousin.”
Silas slowly shook his head.
“No.”
He opened a drawer and removed another photograph.
In it, Elara was holding the same young girl in her arms.
She was not standing beside her like a cousin or an older relative.
She was holding her the way a mother holds her child.
Silas turned the photograph over and placed it in front of me.
Written across the back were five words:
Elara and her daughter, Liora.
For several seconds, I could not breathe.
Before Elara married me, she had another child.
Another daughter.
A daughter named Liora.
The mystery was no longer only about a corrupt school.
It was no longer only about forged records, stolen scholarship funds, or the people who had frightened my eight-year-old daughter into silence.
Someone had connected my child to a daughter Elara had hidden from me.
Someone had chosen the same name.
And the following day, they expected me to bring Liora to an address where she would supposedly learn her “real” identity.
Ravenmere Preparatory Academy believed I was simply a father they could intimidate.
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