Chapter 2: The Woman in the Doorway
Adrien turned toward Evelyn.
“You told me you watched your mother d!e.”
“I did,” Evelyn whispered.
“I stood beside her bed.
I signed the papers.”
“Then who used her key?”
“I don’t know.”
One of the triplets tugged Adrien’s sleeve.
Lila pointed at Marina’s phone, then at the blankets in the corner.
“She brought us here,” Lila whispered.
Adrien dropped to his knees.
“Marina brought you to this room?”
All three children shook their heads.
“Grandma,” Lila said.
Evelyn staggered backward.
“You never met my mother.”
The phone suddenly lit up.
A hidden folder had opened beneath Marina’s final message.
Inside was a photograph dated three days earlier.
It showed Evelyn’s mother standing in the hotel lobby.
Beside her was Adrien’s father.
“That’s impossible,” Adrien said.
“My father hasn’t entered this hotel in twenty years.”
Then a voice echoed from the cellar stairs.
“Your father lied about more than that.”
Evelyn gasped as an elderly woman stepped into the doorway wearing a Grand Aurelia uniform.
“Mother?”
The woman looked at the triplets, then locked her terrified eyes on Adrien.
“Take the children and leave,” she said.
“Before your father realizes Marina’s phone has been found.”
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Why was Evelyn’s mother hiding—and what did Adrien’s father do to Marina?
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