Chapter 1 - The Funeral That Wasn’t HersRain hammered the black umbrellas as Noah stood beside his father at the cemetery, staring at the sealed coffin beneath the gray October sky.
He was twelve years old.
His little sister Lily was only eight.
Neither child had been allowed to see their mother one last time.
Their father had called it mercy.
The doctors had called it necessary.
The police had called it procedure.
Everyone said their mother, Evelyn Carter, had died three weeks earlier in a devastating fire that destroyed the guest wing of the family mansion.
But Noah remembered something no one else seemed to notice.
There had been no smell of smoke on his mother’s favorite blue scarf.
And the night before the fire, she had kissed his forehead and whispered something strange.
“If anything happens to me, Noah… never trust a locked door.”
Now the coffin disappeared beneath the earth.
A woman stood several feet away.
Vanessa.
Elegant. Beautiful. Impossibly calm.
She wore a black dress and held a white umbrella.
She didn't cry.
Instead, she watched Noah.
And when their eyes met, she gave him the faintest smile.
That was the moment Noah felt something inside him turn cold.
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His mother was supposedly dead.
Yet Vanessa looked as if she knew the funeral was only the beginning.
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