Chapter 2 - Blood and Water
The bridal suite was stiflingly warm, smelling of wilting white roses and expensive champagne that no one was going to drink.
Julian paced the length of the room like a caged panther, his hands running through his perfectly styled hair until it was a mess. Victoria sat on the edge of the velvet chaise lounge, her posture broken, clutching a glass of water that shook so violently it spilled over her fingers.
Elena sat as far away from her as physically possible, wrapped in a heavy suit jacket Julian had draped over her ruined dress.
“Twenty-three years,” Victoria murmured to the floor, her eyes glazed. “They told me you drowned. They found your little pink coat by the river. The police said you were swept away. I buried an empty casket.”
“Stop,” Elena said. The word was sharp, slicing through the heavy air.
Victoria looked up, desperate hope in her eyes. “Elizabeth—”
“My name is Elena,” she snapped, her voice trembling with a mix of profound grief and boiling rage. “You don’t get to call me that. You don’t get to play the grieving mother. An hour ago, you called me a gold-digging tramp who wasn’t fit to scrub the floors of your estate.”
Victoria winced as if struck. “I didn’t know. If I had known—”
“If you had known?” Julian exploded, turning on the woman who had raised him. “That’s your defense? You’re only a monster to people who aren’t your blood? You adopted me, Mother! You raised me to believe family is everything, and yet you treated the woman I love like garbage!”
Julian stopped pacing, a horrifying realization washing over his face. He looked at Elena, then at Victoria. The color drained from his cheeks.
“Oh, God,” Julian whispered. “We were at the altar.”
Elena’s stomach plummeted. The wedding.
“We aren’t blood,” Julian said rapidly, his eyes wide. “I was adopted when I was five. Two years after you… after Elizabeth disappeared. But legally? God, the press is going to have a field day with this.”
“To hell with the press,” Elena said, standing up. She clutched the heavy jacket around her. “I spent my entire childhood bouncing from foster home to foster home. I was locked in closets. I was starved. I was told every single day that I was unwanted trash. And you—” She pointed a shaking finger at Victoria. “You had the resources to find me. You have private investigators on retainer! Why didn’t you look?”
“Because the police proved you were dead!” Victoria cried out. “They had DNA on the jacket! They had witnesses who saw a child fall in!”
Elena froze. “What DNA?”
Victoria blinked through her tears. “Blood. Your blood was on the collar.”
The room went dead silent.
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“I was dropped off at a fire station wrapped in a blanket,” Elena said slowly, the gears in her mind turning. “I didn't fall in a river. And I certainly wasn't bleeding.”
Julian’s posture straightened, the brilliant corporate mind kicking in. “If the police found a bloody jacket… but Elena is alive… that means someone intentionally planted it. They faked the death to stop the search.”
