Chapter 5 - THE TEST
Clara read the message three times.
ASK WHO CLARA’S FATHER REALLY WAS.
Then she deleted nothing, touched nothing, and handed the phone to Reyes.
“My father was Michael Bennett.”
Her voice sounded more certain than she felt.
“He raised me. He loved my mother. He died when I was fourteen.”
“No one is saying otherwise,” Reyes replied.
“The message is.”
Adriana sat across the table, watching Clara carefully. “Daniel wants you destabilized.”
“He’s doing a good job.”
“You don’t have to believe him.”
“I don’t.”
But she did not sound convincing, even to herself.
Memories came in strange pieces. Michael teaching her to ride a bicycle. Michael carrying her to bed after she fell asleep on the couch. Michael burning pancakes every Sunday morning and insisting black edges gave them character. Nothing about those memories felt false.
But biology and love were different questions.
Clara hated Daniel for making her separate them.
Reyes closed the laptop. “The old Northstar files may contain the identity behind V-17. I’ll push for the complete archive.”
“How long?”
“As fast as a judge and a records department can move.”
Clara gave a humorless laugh. “That’s reassuring.”
“There’s another option.”
Everyone turned toward Reyes.
“Victoria.”
Adriana immediately shook his head. “No.”
“She knew Daniel. She coordinated Mia’s kidnapping. If anyone knows why he wanted the testing, it may be her.”
“She lies every time she opens her mouth.”
“That doesn’t make every word useless.”
Clara stood. “I’ll see her.”
Adriana looked at her. “Clara.”
“I said last night I might.”
“After everything she did?”
“Because of everything she did.”
He pushed back from the table. “Then I’m coming.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because she knows how to play you.”
The sentence hit him hard.
Clara regretted the cruelty of it but not the truth.
“You’re right,” he said quietly.
That stopped her.
He looked away. “I hate that you’re right, but you are.”
Clara had expected an argument. His refusal to give her one made leaving harder.
Two hours later she sat across from Victoria in a secure interview room at the county detention center.
Victoria wore a gray uniform instead of a wedding dress. Her hair was pulled back. Without makeup and diamonds, she looked younger. Not innocent. Just human.
For some reason, Clara found that worse.
Victoria smiled faintly. “You came.”
“Don’t make me regret it.”
“You regretted meeting me years ago. Why stop now?”
Clara did not react.
Reyes stood behind her near the door.
Clara placed a copy of the lab report on the table. “What is V-17?”
Victoria looked at it and went still.
That tiny reaction was enough.
“You know.”
“I know Daniel used a code.”
“For who?”
“I never saw a name.”
“Why did he test Mia?”
Victoria leaned back. “Because he made me.”
“You could have said no.”
“Yes.”
The simple answer surprised Clara.
Victoria continued. “I could have said no to many things. I didn’t.”
“Spare me the confession.”
“I’m not asking forgiveness.”
“Good.”
Victoria’s eyes shifted to the report. “Daniel approached me before Adriana and I became serious. He knew I wanted him. He knew I hated watching you drift in and out of his life while everyone pretended the two of you were finished.”
“We were finished.”
“No, you were wounded. There’s a difference.”
Clara’s jaw tightened. “Why the blood test?”
“He told me he needed proof Mia belonged to the Bennett line.”
“Why?”
“He said a trust would activate if a qualifying descendant existed.”
“Sophie exists.”
Victoria hesitated.
Clara leaned forward. “Why not Sophie?”
“I asked him the same thing.”
“And?”
“He told me Sophie didn’t qualify.”
Cold moved through Clara’s body.
“Why?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
“You believed him?”
“I didn’t care.”
Victoria looked directly at Clara.
“At that time, I thought the trust was money. I thought if I helped Daniel manage the problem, he would make sure Adriana stopped looking back at you.”
“Manage the problem.” Clara’s voice hardened. “You mean my baby.”
Victoria flinched.
“Say it.”
“I mean Mia.”
“You took my child.”
“Yes.”
“You watched me beg on television for her return.”
Victoria’s eyes lowered.
“You sat beside Adriana while he told me I was making things worse. You let everyone think I was insane.”
“Yes.”
“You tried to have me killed.”
Victoria looked up sharply. “No.”
Clara froze.
Reyes stepped forward. “Careful.”
“I arranged for Clara to be frightened,” Victoria said. “I arranged the crash. I knew someone was supposed to run her off the road.”
Clara’s stomach turned.
“You’re splitting hairs.”
“No. Daniel changed the plan.”
“What plan?” Reyes asked.
Victoria’s face had gone pale. “The driver was supposed to force Clara’s car into a ditch. No impact. No collision. Just scare her badly enough that she would leave town with Sophie.”
Clara stared at her. “And you think that makes you better?”
“No.”
“Then why tell me?”
“Because when the driver called me afterward, he was terrified. He said Daniel had offered him five times more money to make sure you didn’t walk away.”
Reyes pulled out a notebook. “Name.”
“Liam Cross.”
“We already know Cross.”
“Then you know he disappeared.”
Reyes said nothing.
Victoria’s mouth tightened. “Daniel does that. People become useful, then expensive, then inconvenient.”
“Where is Liam?” Clara asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What else did Daniel tell you?”
Victoria looked at Clara for a long moment.
“He told me your thirtieth birthday mattered.”
Clara’s pulse quickened.
“Why?”
“The Bennett trust transfers out of management when you turn thirty.”
“My birthday is four months away.”
“I know.”
“Then why act now?”
“Because Daniel said Mia changed the deadline.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“Stop saying that.”
“I don’t know everything, Clara!” Victoria snapped. “Daniel never treated me like a partner. He treated me like a tool with expensive taste.”
“Yet you kept helping him.”
“Because I thought I could control him.”
“And how did that work out?”
Victoria’s laugh was empty. “Look at my clothes.”
Clara stood.
“Wait.”
She looked down at Victoria.
“There’s more.”
“Then say it.”
“The night Mia was taken, Daniel asked for two things.”
“What?”
“A fresh DNA sample and the silver locket you always kept in Mia’s diaper bag.”
Clara’s hand went to her throat.
The locket.
She had forgotten about it in the panic after the kidnapping.
It had belonged to Eleanor. A small oval piece of silver with a scratched flower on the front. Clara had placed it in Mia’s bag because the clasp had broken and she planned to have it repaired.
“Why did he want it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he get it?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“Daniel has it.”
Clara closed her eyes.
Her mother’s locket. Her daughter’s blood. A hidden trust.
The pieces were beginning to resemble something, but not enough.
Victoria lowered her voice. “Daniel said the locket was a key.”
“To what?”
“He didn’t say.”
Reyes looked at Clara. “Do you know anything hidden inside it?”
“No. I wore it for years.”
“Did you ever open the back?”
“It didn’t open.”
Victoria gave Clara a strange look. “Apparently it does.”
When Clara returned home, Adriana was sitting on the front steps.
“You said you wouldn’t come in unless I asked.”
“I didn’t come in.”
She almost smiled despite herself.
“How did it go?”
“Terribly.”
“That sounds like Victoria.”
Clara sat beside him.
For a moment neither spoke.
Then she told him everything.
The blood test. The trust. Her thirtieth birthday. The locket.
Adriana listened without interruption.
When she finished, he stared at the street. “I remember that locket.”
“You do?”
“You wore it the first night we met.”
Clara turned toward him.
He smiled faintly. “Blue dress. Terrible music. You spilled a drink on me.”
“You bumped into me.”
“You were walking backward.”
“You were standing somewhere stupid.”
A laugh escaped her before she could stop it.
The sound startled them both.
Adriana looked at her, and for one dangerous second the years between them disappeared.
Then Clara remembered the altar.
Victoria in white.
She looked away.
“I’m not ready,” she said.
“I know.”
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like we can go back.”
His voice was quiet. “I don’t want to go back.”
Clara looked at him again.
“I want to build something that doesn’t require you to forget what I did.”
That was harder to defend against than an apology.
Before she could answer, Reyes’s car pulled up.
The detective came toward them holding a folder.
“We identified V-17.”
Clara stood so quickly she nearly stumbled.
“Who?”
Reyes glanced at Adriana, then back at Clara.
“The sample belonged to a man named Samuel Bennett.”
Clara frowned. “I don’t know anyone named Samuel Bennett.”
“He died sixteen years ago.”
“Who was he?”
Reyes opened the folder.
“According to the sealed records we just obtained, Samuel Bennett was Michael Bennett’s older brother.”
Clara stared at her.
“My father never had a brother.”
“According to the public records, he didn’t.”
Reyes handed her a photograph.
Clara looked down.
The man in the photograph had her eyes.
Not similar eyes.
Her eyes.
A second document sat beneath it.
A notarized statement dated twenty-nine years earlier.
Clara read the first sentence.
My name is Samuel Bennett, and if anything happens to Eleanor or me, the child she is carrying must never be told I am her biological father until the Vale matter is resolved.
The paper began shaking in Clara’s hands.
Adriana stood beside her but did not touch her.
Clara read the sentence again.
May you like
And suddenly the father she remembered, the mother she trusted, the company she had never known was hers, and the baby someone had stolen from her all became part of the same secret.
A secret that had begun before Clara was born.
