“Stop.”
Adrian Vale’s voice cut through Bellamy House so sharply that even the people pretending not to watch finally turned.
Celeste still had one hand lifted near my torn blouse.
A few drops of wine slid from the empty bottle she had set down too hard on the table.
The shattered glasses remained scattered across the marble floor around my shoes.
But Adrian wasn’t looking at any of that.
He was looking at the mark above my heart.
I pulled the torn fabric closed.
His expression made me more uneasy than Celeste’s cruelty had.
For a man famous for controlling rooms without raising his voice, Adrian suddenly looked as if the floor had vanished beneath him.
Celeste recovered first.
“Oh, Adrian, please.” She gave a brittle laugh.
“She was being insolent.
She refused a guest.”
“A seventeen-year-old guest who was already drunk,” I said.
Celeste turned toward me.
“Nobody asked you.”
Adrian’s eyes never left my face.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Twenty-five.”
His hand tightened around the back of his chair.
“Where were you born?”
“I don’t know.”
The answer seemed to strike him physically.
Murmurs moved through the room.
Celeste’s confidence returned just enough for annoyance to replace fear.
“What is this?” she demanded.
“Why are you interrogating her?”
Adrian finally looked at his goddaughter.
“Because that birthmark belonged to my daughter.”
The room went still again.
I stared at him.
He continued carefully, as if each word had edges.
“My daughter disappeared twenty years ago.
She was five.”
My fingers went numb around the torn fabric.
The bus station came back to me with painful clarity: rain against metal, fluorescent light, the gray coat moving away through strangers, and the promise that someone would return.
Nobody had.
Adrian took one step toward me.
“She had a mark in exactly that place.
Same shape.
Same size.”
Celeste laughed too loudly.
“You cannot be serious.
Lots of people have birthmarks.”
“Yes,” Adrian said.
“They do.”
Then he looked at me again.
“What is your earliest memory?”
I swallowed.
“A bus station.”
His face changed.
“Which one?”
“I don’t know.
I was five.
It was raining.
