Chapter 1 - The Girls at the Lake
Daniel Moretti first saw the twins beside an abandoned boathouse on the northern edge of Lake Bellagio.
He had not planned to be there.
A storm had damaged one of the private docks belonging to the Moretti estate, and the maintenance director had called Daniel during a meeting in Milan. Daniel returned to the family mansion that afternoon, changed into walking shoes, and followed the lakeside path to inspect the damage himself.
He preferred handling problems without an audience.
His father had once said that wealth made ordinary inconveniences invisible. Daniel had spent most of his adult life proving that he could still see them.
The path curved through pine trees and descended toward the old stone boathouse. It had not been used since Daniel was a boy. The roof leaned toward the water, the windows were boarded, and vines covered most of the rear wall.
As Daniel approached, he heard a child coughing.
He stopped.
A second cough followed.
Daniel moved around the side of the structure and found two little girls sitting beneath the roof’s narrow overhang.
They looked exactly alike.
Their dark curls were tangled from wind and sleep. Their cream dresses were stained near the hems, and neither child wore shoes. One held a small cloth rabbit. The other clutched a paper bag containing several hard bread rolls.
Daniel looked around for an adult.
“Hello?”
No one answered.
The girl with the rabbit tightened her grip.
Daniel lowered himself several feet away from them.
“My name is Daniel. I live in the house across the lake.”
The twins exchanged a glance.
The one with the bread shook her head.
“Not across,” she said.
Daniel almost smiled.
“No. I suppose it looks farther from here.”
The other child studied his face with disturbing intensity.
“Are you the Daniel from the picture?”
His smile disappeared.
“What picture?”
The girls moved closer together.
The child with the bread reached into the paper bag and took out a damaged photograph. Only half of it remained. The torn image showed a younger Daniel standing beneath a flowering arch at the Moretti vineyard.
Beside him was a woman whose face had been ripped away.
Daniel recognized the blue dress.
He recognized the thin gold bracelet on the woman’s wrist.
He recognized the day.
Claire Bennett had worn that dress at his father’s retirement celebration, six weeks before she disappeared from Daniel’s life.
Daniel took the photograph carefully.
“Where did you get this?”
“Mommy,” the child replied.
The word tightened something inside him.
“What is your mommy’s name?”
The twins hesitated.
Then the girl with the rabbit said, “Claire.”
The lake wind seemed to vanish.
Daniel looked at the two identical faces.
Their eyes were gray-green, unusual and familiar. Claire’s eyes had been the same color.
The shape of their brows resembled hers.
But the slight dimple in the left cheek belonged to Daniel.
He had seen it in photographs of himself as a child.
Daniel forced himself to breathe evenly.
“Where is Claire now?”
The twins stared down at the ground.
The one with the bread whispered, “She told us to wait for the bells.”
“What bells?”
“The house bells.”
The Moretti mansion’s antique clock tower rang every evening at six. Its chimes could be heard across the northern shore.
Daniel checked his watch.
It was five forty-three.
“Did someone bring you here?”
The girls nodded.
“Who?”
“A lady with red gloves,” the child holding the rabbit said. “She said she had to find help.”
“Did she tell you her name?”
“No.”
Daniel took out his phone and called the estate security office.
He ordered two guards to search the trails and roads around the lake. Then he contacted a local pediatric doctor and asked her to come to the mansion discreetly.
He did not call the police.
Not yet.
If Claire had sent these children, she had chosen the abandoned boathouse for a reason. She had also given them Daniel’s photograph.
That meant she expected him to find them.
Or she had expected someone else to prevent it.
Daniel removed his jacket and wrapped it around both girls.
“What are your names?”
“Ivy,” said the one with the bread.
“Skye,” said the one with the rabbit.
“How old are you?”
They each raised three fingers.
Daniel felt the ground shift beneath his understanding of the last four years.
Claire had left him forty-six months earlier.
Three-year-old twins could have been conceived shortly before she vanished.
He remembered their final evening together. Claire had seemed frightened and distracted. She kept looking toward the windows of Daniel’s apartment and had asked strange questions about the Moretti family trust.
The next morning, Daniel received a letter in Claire’s handwriting.
It said she had never loved him.
It said she was leaving Europe.
It said he should not search for her.
Daniel had searched anyway.
His mother claimed Claire had taken money from the family foundation. Ethan produced banking records showing transfers to an account in Claire’s name. A private investigator located a travel record suggesting she had flown to Argentina.
Then the trail ended.
Daniel had eventually accepted that Claire had chosen a life without him.
Now two little girls sat beneath his jacket with her eyes and his childhood dimple.
A distant bell sounded from the mansion.
Ivy grabbed Daniel’s hand.
“We have to go now.”
“Why?”
“Mommy said the bad man comes after the bells.”
Daniel stood.
Across the lake, the mansion’s clock began its first chime.
On the road above the boathouse, a dark vehicle appeared between the trees.
It slowed.
Then it turned toward them.
Daniel lifted both twins into his arms.
The vehicle’s headlights flashed once.
Ivy buried her face against Daniel’s shoulder.
“That’s his car.”
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Daniel carried the girls into the trees as the second bell rang.
Behind him, the vehicle stopped beside the abandoned boathouse.
