Chapter 3 - The Shadow in the GardenThe celebration lasted until midnight.
Music drifted through the estate.
Clara stood alone on her balcony, staring at the emerald pendant resting against her collarbone.
For the first time in her life, she felt safe.
Loved.
Home.
Then she noticed movement beyond the garden.
A shadow.
Someone was standing beneath the ancient oak trees.
Clara leaned forward.
The figure disappeared.
She dismissed it as imagination.
But three hundred yards away, the stranger raised a pair of binoculars.
A gloved hand opened an encrypted phone.
On the screen was a medical record from twenty-two years earlier.
Female twins.
The stranger smiled.
"She found the first girl."
A distorted voice answered through the phone.
"And the second?"
"Still hidden."
"Then initiate Phase Two."
The call ended.
The stranger looked toward the mansion.
Two decades ago, two infants had been taken.
One had been returned.
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The other remained somewhere in the world.
And whoever had separated them had never intended for the truth to emerge.
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