“That belonged to my daughter!” the port magnate shouted, and his voice suddenly carried far more force than I would have thought possible. “I looked for it for twenty years. How did it end up with you? Answer me right now, young lady!”
Claudia reacted instantly. “A thief in the house?” she said sharply, staring at me in outrage.
Her face twisted with indignation. “These agencies have no standards anymore, sending us people like this.” A housemaid rushed in at the noise and stopped in the doorway, startled.
Ilya Danilovich, breathing hard, demanded that the brooch be taken from me immediately. I clenched it in my fist, feeling the sharp silver edges press into my skin. The unfairness of it burned hotter than my fear, and I blurted out, my throat tight with anger and humiliation:
“If it’s really your daughter’s, then tell me what’s engraved on the back.” The old man stopped short. His face, red with anger a second before, went pale, and something like real pain flashed in his eyes.
“For my girl,” he said in a broken voice. Before I could react, Claudia grabbed my wrist and tore the brooch free from my top. She pried open my fingers and took it by force, then stepped over to the old man and placed it in his hand.
Together with the maid, she started shoving me toward the door, throwing insults over her shoulder. “We don’t keep con artists in this house,” Claudia hissed, pushing me out. Before the heavy door slammed shut, I managed to call back, putting every bit of anger and desperation I had into the words:
“It was my mother’s. Her name was Lisa, and she left it to me. It belongs to me.” For one brief moment, everything went still. Then from inside the room came the old man’s voice, firm and unmistakable.
“Stop. Bring her back. Now.” They led me back in, rumpled and shaking with indignation. Ilya Danilovich sat in his chair, the brooch resting in his old hand.
It was turned over, face down. The engraving was too small to see from where I stood, but I knew it by heart. “For my girl, my E.”
The old man already had a phone to his ear. “Get over here right away,” he said crisply, never taking his eyes off the brooch.
“We need a DNA test. Immediately.” Waiting for the results turned the whole house tense. Whenever Claudia saw me, she looked at me the way someone looks at mud tracked in on a clean floor.
To her, I was still a thief, a brazen girl reaching for something sacred, and her contempt was almost physical. I was in shock myself. The one thread connecting me to my past—the name Lisa and the silver halibut I still hadn’t gotten back—wouldn’t leave my mind. At the children’s home, they had given me a different last name. I’d learned early how to survive and rely on my own hands, and now those hands still had a job to do.
I locked my personal turmoil away as best I could. While I was on duty, I was a caregiver, and my responsibility was to follow the care plan and help my patient. The day after the blowup, Claudia informed her uncle that she was leaving on a business trip for a few days…
