Private investigators. Former detectives. Security firms.
Millions of dollars.
Nothing.
No trail.
No answers.
No nephew.
Until six weeks ago.
When Rosa Mendez came to Ravenhill House looking for work.
Celeste suddenly saw it all.
The maid’s face.
The last name.
The fear she wore like a second skin.
“Oh my God,” she breathed.
Gideon nodded slowly.
“Rosa is Lucia’s younger sister.”
“That’s why you hired her.”
“Yes.”
“That’s why you have been watching her.”
“Yes.”
“And the baby…”
Gideon’s expression darkened.
“The baby changed everything.”
Upstairs, Rosa sat beside the crib and watched her son sleep.
Her hands trembled.
Because she had not told Gideon the whole truth.
Not yet.
She had told him someone was looking for the child.
But she had not told him who.
Or why.
Or what she had discovered three weeks earlier.
A discovery that had nearly gotten her killed.
Slowly, Rosa reached beneath the mattress and pulled out a small waterproof pouch.
Inside was a flash drive.
Nothing more.
A tiny piece of plastic.
Worth almost nothing to most people.
Worth killing for to others.
Rosa stared at it.
Then at her sleeping boy.
Tears gathered in her eyes.
“Your aunt died protecting this,” she whispered.
Her voice broke.
“Your mother died because of this.”
Then a knock sounded at the bedroom door.
Rosa froze.
The flash drive slipped from her fingers.
The knock came again.
Slow.
Heavy.
Not the knock of a servant.
Not Gideon.
Someone else.
Someone she did not know.
Then a man’s voice came from the hallway.
Deep.
Calm.
Terrifying.
“Miss Mendez?”
Rosa’s blood turned cold.
She knew that voice.
She had heard it once before.
The night someone tried to run her off the road.
The night she almost died.
And there was only one reason he would be here.
He had found her.
After all these years, he had found the child.
To be continued…