Chapter 2 - The Shadows of Saint Anne's
Gabriel did not leave the house that night without me. Within thirty minutes, his security team escorted me into a black armored sedan parked in front of the estate. Adrian tried to follow, shouting excuses and demands, but Gabriel’s head of security held him back with a single arm against his chest.
“If you approach her,” Gabriel warned through the open car window, “it will be treated as an assault on my family.”
As the car pulled away from the mansion, I looked back through the tinted glass. Adrian stood on the porch, his face twisted in rage and panic, while Celeste clutched his arm, looking as though she had seen a ghost.
Inside the car, Gabriel handed me a handkerchief to clean the dried blood from my lip.
“You’re safe now,” he said, his voice cracking with emotional strain. “I don't know how you ended up in that house, or why you endured his cruelty, but it ends tonight.”
“I endured it because I was waiting for the right moment to destroy him,” I answered plainly.
Gabriel blinked, surprised by the sharpness in my tone. “You knew about him?”
“I knew he was embezzling from Halcyon,” I said. “Eighteen months ago, I accidentally found a hidden directory on his personal laptop. He thought I was just doing basic data entry for his side business. He didn't know I spent three years studying forensic accounting before I met him. I saw the shell companies—Vanguard Holdings, Apex Logistics. All registered under his mother’s maiden name.”
Gabriel stared at me in awe. “You’re the whistleblower? The one who has been sending encrypted files to our board investigator, Richard Vance?”
“I am ‘Nemesis’,” I confirmed. “I had eighty percent of the proof I needed. I was waiting for the final quarterly transfer next week before handing everything over to the Federal Reserve and the SEC. But tonight changed the timeline.”
Gabriel leaned back against the leather seat, a mix of pride and sorrow in his eyes. “You have my mind, Aurelia. Your mother always said you were too smart for your own good, even as a toddler.”
He pulled out a secure tablet and opened a file containing old photographs. He handed it to me. On the screen was a young woman with dark hair and bright grey eyes—the exact reflection I saw in the mirror every morning. She was holding a little girl with a crescent moon necklace.
My heart hammered against my ribs. For twenty years, I had believed I was an unwanted baby left on the steps of an orphanage during a winter storm. I had grown up with no past, no lineage, no anchor.
“Her name was Clara,” Gabriel said quietly. “She died three years after you disappeared. She never gave up hope. We searched every state, hired every detective, but the trail went cold at Saint Anne’s Children’s Home. The records from that winter were mysteriously destroyed in a fire.”
“A fire?” I repeated, memories stirring in the back of my mind. “I remember smoke. I remember cold metal... and a woman with red ring on her finger.”
Gabriel froze. “A red ring?”
“Yes. A large ruby ring. She was the one who left me at the gates.”
Gabriel’s jaw tightened, his fists clenching on his lap. “Celeste Vance... Adrian’s mother. She wears a ruby ring on her right hand. She has worn it for thirty years.”
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The realization hit the interior of the car like a physical shockwave. The connection was not a coincidence. My presence in Adrian’s life was not a random twist of fate.
Celeste hadn't just taken me in as a poor orphan to serve her son—she had known exactly who I was from the very beginning.
