Chapter 3 - THE FAMILY THAT HAD BEEN SEARCHING
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Daniel Whitmore arrived at Holly Mercer's office at ten the next morning.
He was a silver-haired man in his late fifties, dressed in a dark suit that looked expensive without being flashy. He carried a leather portfolio and paused when he saw Nora.
For several seconds, he simply stared.
Then he said, “You have your mother's eyes.”
Nora felt her throat tighten.
“Do you have proof?”
Daniel nodded.
He opened the portfolio and removed a photograph.
A young woman stood beside a stone wall, holding a baby wrapped in a yellow blanket. Around her neck was a silver pendant shaped like a bird.
Nora touched the pendant beneath her sweater.
“That's my mother?”
“Eleanor Whitmore.”
Nora looked at the baby.
Her own eyes stared back at her.
Her own mouth.
The same small dimple beside the chin.
Daniel placed a second photograph on the table. It showed a large family gathered on the lawn of an estate outside Boston. A little girl stood in front of a woman with dark hair.
“Your mother was the youngest daughter,” he explained. “She fell in love with a man our family considered unsuitable. When she became pregnant, her father threatened to disinherit her.”
“Did he?”
“He tried. But Eleanor had already inherited an interest in the family trust.”
Nora looked up.
“What happened to my father?”
“He died in a car accident when you were four.”
“And my mother?”
Daniel hesitated.
“She disappeared.”
Nora stared at him.
“People don't just disappear.”
“Your mother believed someone was following her. She took you to a hospital in Providence. By the following morning, she was gone. You were found alone at a bus terminal.”
“Why didn't anyone find me?”
“We did. Eventually. But the records were incomplete, and the authorities believed you had been placed with another family. By the time we discovered the mistake, you had already been adopted.”
Nora swallowed.
“Evelyn Bellamy was my mother.”
Daniel nodded immediately.
“I don't mean to take that away from you. I know she raised you. I know she loved you. Eleanor would have been grateful that someone cared for you.”
Nora looked down at the photograph.
“Why did you contact me now?”
“Your DNA matched a distant relative. The family office received the notification and began verifying the result.”
“And the trust?”
Daniel opened another folder.
“Your mother was the principal beneficiary of a private trust. If she was deceased, her direct descendants would inherit her interest.”
“How much?”
Daniel gave her a figure.
Nora barely heard it.
She was thinking about Camden.
About the attorney who had requested her identity records before she even knew she had a birth family.
“Why would my husband care about the trust?”
Daniel exchanged a glance with Holly.
“Because the trust owns a controlling interest in a shipping infrastructure company.”
Nora frowned.
“Which company?”
“Breakwater Logistics.”
The room became silent.
Nora looked at Daniel.
“That's impossible. Camden founded Breakwater.”
“No,” Daniel said gently. “He managed it. The Whitmore trust provided the original capital through a holding company. Your mother authorized the investment before she disappeared.”
Nora stared at the documents.
The warehouse lease.
The first payroll.
The early contracts.
She remembered how Camden had struggled to secure financing. She remembered him telling her that a mysterious private investor had agreed to support the company.
He had never named the investor.
Now she understood why.
“Did Camden know about my mother?”
Daniel nodded slowly.
“We believe he suspected your identity before your marriage.”
Nora felt sick.
“Before he proposed?”
“Yes.”
Holly closed her notebook.
“Then we need to investigate the circumstances of their relationship.”
Daniel placed one final document on the table.
It was a photograph of a younger Camden standing beside Nora's grandfather outside a charity dinner.
Nora stared at it.
“How long had they known each other?”
“Several months before Camden met you.”
She looked up.
“Was our relationship arranged?”
May you like
Daniel didn't answer immediately.
And that silence told her more than she wanted to know.
