CHAPTER 1 — The Sister Everyone Erased
CHAPTER 1 — The Sister Everyone Erased
The ballroom remained frozen.
No one spoke.
No one even dared to breathe.
Olivia's engagement ring slipped from her trembling fingers and struck the marble floor with a tiny metallic sound that echoed through the silence.
"You..." she whispered. "That's impossible."
Ethan never looked at her.
His eyes stayed fixed on the frightened little girl.
"What is your name?" he asked softly.
"Sophie."
"And your mother?"
The child wiped her tears with the back of her hand.
"My mommy was Amelia."
The name hit Ethan harder than any punch.
His older sister.
The sister everyone had claimed died in a car accident twenty-two years ago.
Except...
Amelia hadn't died then.
She had disappeared.
His grandfather had forbidden anyone from mentioning her again after she fell in love with a poor musician instead of marrying into another wealthy dynasty.
"She betrayed the family," the old man had declared.
From that day forward, every photograph of Amelia vanished.
Every document was destroyed.
Every memory was buried.
Except one.
The silver family crest.
Only direct descendants of the Hawthorne family received one on their fifth birthday.
There were only five in existence.
And Sophie held the missing crest.
Ethan slowly knelt before her.
"Where is your mother now?"
The little girl's lips trembled.
"She died three months ago."
A painful silence spread across the ballroom.
"Before she died," Sophie whispered, "she told me to find the big house with the crystal lights... and give this to my brother."
Ethan closed his eyes.
His sister had spent twenty years searching for the courage to return.
She never made it.
Instead...
She sent her daughter.
Across the room, Ethan's grandfather, Richard Hawthorne, suddenly looked twenty years older.
His hands shook.
Because he realized the truth.
His daughter had never abandoned the family.
The family had abandoned her.