Chapter 1 - The Girl in the Silver Frame
Victor pointed at the locked wooden box in the center of his penthouse table.
"Open it."
I had spent eighteen years repairing locks, and I knew the little brass mechanism before I touched it.
"I know this lock," I said.
My late uncle had made it in the back of his workshop in Brooklyn, where I learned to cut keys before I was old enough to drive.
There was a shallow nick beside the keyhole, the mark he left when he made a custom box for someone he trusted.
I had last seen that box twelve years earlier, on the night my family disappeared.
I turned the hidden catch with a wire tool and lifted the lid.
Inside was a single framed photograph of a young girl.
Her hair was dark and braided over one shoulder.
She had a small crescent-shaped birthmark beside her left ear.
I knew that face, even though it had changed since the last time I held it against mine.
"That's my daughter."
The words left me without permission.
Sofia had been four years old when a fire tore through the house where we were staying in New Jersey.
I survived with burns on both arms.
The hospital told me my husband was dead, and a man from Victor's office told me there was no one left to rescue.
For twelve years I had believed Sofia died in that fire.
I had buried an empty casket because no one would let me see the remains they claimed had been identified.
Now Victor sat across from me in a room overlooking Manhattan and watched me hold a photograph of a girl who looked about sixteen.
"Where did you get this?"
He looked away.
"She's safe here. But she doesn't know you're alive."
I stood so quickly the chair struck the floor.
"What did you say?"
Victor didn't reach for me.
He didn't summon the guards waiting outside the penthouse.
"Marisol, sit down."
"You told me she died."
"I told you what I thought would keep her safe."
"You let me bury my child."
The framed photograph shook in my hands.
Sofia wore a blue sweater and stood beside a school theater poster.
On the back someone had written her first name in neat black ink.
Not Sofia.
Sienna.
Victor watched me read it.
"She was given another name. A guardian, an ordinary school, a life without the people who were looking for her."
"Which people?"
"The ones who burned that house."
I wanted to throw the box through the wall.
Instead I placed the frame on the table with care so fierce it hurt.
"I'm going to see her."
"Not tonight. She thinks her mother died when she was little."
"Then we'll tell her the truth."
"It's not that simple."
I looked at the man who had been my husband's older brother, the man who once carried Sofia on his shoulders and brought her orange candies from every business trip.
"For twelve years, you decided what was simple for both of us. You don't get to decide that anymore."
Victor opened his mouth to speak.
Then he glanced toward the hallway and went pale.
May you like
A young woman's voice called from beyond the penthouse door.
"Uncle Victor? Why is there a picture of my mother on your table?"
