Chapter 4 - THE SECOND DAUGHTER
“MY MOTHER WOULD HAVE TOLD ME IF I HAD A TWIN!”
Léa slammed the hospital photograph onto Raphaël's desk.
Her hands trembled so violently that the paper slid across the polished wood.
“She would have told me.”
Nobody answered.
Camille reached for her, but Léa stepped away.
“Don't touch me. Please.”
Camille withdrew her hand immediately.
Léa turned toward the window.
Outside, the mansion's gardens stretched into the darkness. Beyond the iron gates lay Paris, the city where she had lived her entire life without knowing that another version of her own face might be walking its streets.
She tried to remember everything Elise had ever told her about her birth.
There had been stories about the hospital.
About a storm that lasted through the night.
About the nurse who had placed Léa in her mother's arms and joked that she had the loudest cry in the maternity ward.
But Elise had never mentioned another baby.
Not once.
Raphaël studied the photograph.
“This hospital closed more than twenty years ago.”
Adrien looked up.
“Saint-Claire Maternity Clinic?”
“Yes. It was privately owned.”
“By whom?”
Raphaël hesitated.
“An investment group associated with the Delcourt Foundation.”
Léa turned.
“Your family owned the hospital?”
“Not directly.”
She laughed bitterly.
“Of course.”
Camille looked at the two labels.
“If the records still exist, we can find out what happened.”
Adrien shook his head.
“Medical records from twenty-nine years ago may be difficult to recover.”
“Then we start with the birth registry,” Camille replied.
Raphaël nodded.
“I'll ask Henri to help us.”
Léa folded her arms.
“No.”
Everyone looked at her.
“I don't want your lawyers controlling this investigation. I don't want your employees deciding which documents I see. And I certainly don't want your family telling me what I should believe.”
Raphaël looked wounded.
“What do you want?”
“An independent investigator.”
Adrien frowned.
“That could attract attention.”
Léa met his eyes.
“My mother is dead. Someone may have murdered her. And now I find out I might have a twin sister. I stopped caring about your family's reputation the moment you put your hands on me downstairs.”
Adrien looked away.
Camille stepped forward.
“I know someone.”
She explained that a former police investigator named Victor Laurent had helped her uncover financial misconduct at a charity several years earlier.
“He's discreet, but he doesn't work for people who expect him to bury inconvenient facts.”
“Good,” Léa said. “Then call him.”
Raphaël glanced toward the door.
“It's nearly midnight.”
“Then he can decide whether this is important enough to answer.”
Camille made the call.
Victor agreed to meet them the following morning.
Léa wanted to leave immediately.
But before she could reach the door, Raphaël spoke.
“There's something I need to give you.”
He opened a drawer and removed a small velvet box.
Inside was a delicate gold bracelet.
A tiny swallow hung from its chain.
Léa recognized it instantly.
Her mother had worn that bracelet in nearly every photograph from her twenties.
“Where did you get this?”
Raphaël's eyes filled with tears.
“I gave it to Elise before you were born.”
Léa picked it up.
The metal felt cold against her palm.
“She stopped wearing it when I was little,” Léa whispered. “She told me it reminded her of someone who had made a promise he couldn't keep.”
Raphaël lowered his head.
“She was right.”
Léa closed the box.
“I don't want your money.”
“I know.”
“I don't want a mansion.”
“I understand.”
“And I don't want you to think that telling me you're my father means you've suddenly earned the right to be part of my life.”
Raphaël swallowed.
“I don't.”
She studied him for a long moment.
“Then help me find the truth. Not the version that protects you. The real truth.”
He nodded.
“I will.”
Outside, a car waited to take Léa home.
Camille offered to accompany her, but Léa declined.
She needed silence.
She needed the familiar walls of her small apartment.
And more than anything, she needed to be somewhere her mother had once been alive.
When she finally entered the apartment near Montmartre, she did not turn on the lights.
She sat at the kitchen table and placed the photograph of the two babies beside Elise's old ceramic coffee mug.
For seven years, she had refused to throw that mug away.
A small chip marked its handle.
Her mother had always insisted it was still perfectly usable.
Léa touched the rim.
“Mom,” she whispered, “what were you trying to protect me from?”
The apartment remained silent.
Then she remembered the locked wooden drawer.
After Elise's death, Léa had found the key hidden inside a sewing box. She had opened the drawer and discovered nothing except old receipts, photographs, and a folded scarf.
She had never examined the drawer itself.
Now she went to her mother's old bedroom.
The furniture remained almost exactly as Elise had left it.
Léa knelt beside the dresser.
She pulled out the drawer.
Something rattled beneath the wooden base.
Her heart began pounding.
She turned the drawer upside down and discovered a thin panel secured with two tiny screws.
Using a screwdriver from her restoration kit, she carefully loosened them.
Beneath the panel was a narrow compartment.
Inside lay a sealed envelope.
Her name was written across the front.
For Léa, when the truth finally reaches you.
She recognized her mother's handwriting.
Her hands shook as she opened it.
Inside was a letter.
My darling girl,
If you're reading this, it means the past has finally found us.
There is something I should have told you long ago. I wanted to. God knows I wanted to.
But I was afraid that knowing the truth would place you in danger.
You were born with a sister.
Her name was Juliette.
Léa covered her mouth.
Tears blurred the page.
She forced herself to continue.
They told me she died shortly after birth. They showed me documents. They told me there was nothing I could do.
For twenty-two years, I believed them.
But now I have discovered that my baby girl may still be alive.
And the person who took her is someone you have seen before.
Léa's breathing became shallow.
May you like
At the bottom of the letter was one final sentence.
“IF I DISAPPEAR, DON'T TRUST THE WOMAN WHO CALLS HERSELF YOUR FATHER'S WIFE.”
