Chapter 13 - The Woman in the Photograph
Emilia searched her grandmother’s office and discovered a photograph hidden behind an old painting.
It showed her grandmother standing beside a young woman Emilia immediately recognized.
Her mother.
Emilia had been told her mother abandoned the family when she was five.
But the photograph was dated ten years after that disappearance.
On the back, her grandmother had written:
Clara returned. Victor made sure nobody believed her.
Victor Cross was Emilia’s father—the man who had controlled every part of her childhood.
chapter 14 – The Unexpected Guest
The following afternoon, a black car stopped outside the hotel.
A man named Julian Voss stepped out and claimed he had worked for Emilia’s grandmother.
He warned her not to open the fourth-floor room.
“What’s behind it?” Emilia asked.
“Proof that destroyed your family once.”
Julian offered to buy the hotel for twice its value, but Emilia refused.
May you like
His polite expression vanished.
“Then you should understand something,” he said. “Owning this building does not mean you control what happens inside it.”
