Chapter 1: The Pocket Watch Opens the Past
Chapter 1: The Pocket Watch Opens the Past
The silence swallowed the ballroom.
Even the string quartet stopped playing.
Beatrice Bellamy's sharp voice cut through the room.
"Take that girl outside."
Two security guards stepped forward.
Lucia didn't move.
"I've spent twenty-four years outside this family," she said quietly. "I'm not leaving until someone explains why."
Valentina laughed once, though it sounded forced.
"This is ridiculous. She's insane."
Lucia slowly reached beneath her apron.
The guards stiffened.
Instead of a weapon, she pulled out an old silver pocket watch.
Its surface was scratched with age.
Across the front, engraved beneath the Bellamy family crest, were two tiny initials.
V.B.
Beatrice's face drained of color.
"No..." she whispered.
Lucia opened the watch.
Inside rested a faded photograph.
Two newborn girls slept side by side in the same hospital blanket.
Around one baby's ankle was a hospital band reading Valentina Bellamy.
Around the other...
Lucia Bellamy.
Gasps rippled through the ballroom.
Valentina stared.
"That's fake."
"It isn't."
Lucia handed the photograph to the nearest guest, an elderly judge who had known the Bellamy family for decades.
His hands trembled.
"I remember this hospital," he murmured.
"The Bellamys announced only one child."
All eyes turned toward Beatrice.
The elderly matriarch stood perfectly still.
For the first time in decades...
She looked afraid.
"I buried one granddaughter," Beatrice said.
Her voice was barely audible.
"At least... that's what I believed."
Lucia's throat tightened.
"My adoptive mother told me I was found outside Saint Gabriel Hospital wrapped in a blue blanket."
Beatrice slowly closed her eyes.
"The doctor told us one twin died during delivery."
"My son collapsed after hearing the news."
"My daughter-in-law nearly died herself."
"I never questioned it."
Lucia's fingers shook.
"Someone lied."
The ballroom suddenly no longer felt like a birthday party.
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It felt like a courtroom.
And the Bellamy family was finally on trial.
