Chapter 3 - The Missing Sterling ChildThe black sedan waited behind the catering van with its headlights off.
Maya almost turned back.
Then Richard’s voice echoed from the hallway.
“Check the service door!”
The decision was made for her.
She lifted Lily into the back seat, pushed the suitcases inside, and climbed after her.
The driver pulled away before the door was fully closed.
“Who are you?” Maya demanded.
“My name is Thomas Reed. I work for Mr. Julian Sterling.”
“The man from the party?”
“Yes.”
“Why is he following me?”
Thomas looked at her through the mirror.
“He believes you may be his niece.”
Maya stared at him.
“That’s not possible.”
Thomas said nothing.
“Stop the car.”
“Mr. Sterling asked that we take you somewhere secure.”
“I said stop.”
The sedan slowed beneath an overpass.
Thomas turned in his seat.
“Twenty-six years ago, Julian Sterling’s younger sister disappeared with her three-year-old daughter after a private plane crash investigation exposed irregularities inside the family company.”
Maya’s breathing changed.
“My mother died when I was five.”
“What was her name?”
“Anna Vale.”
Thomas took out his phone and displayed an old photograph.
A blonde woman in her early thirties stood beside Julian Sterling outside a Manhattan museum.
Maya recognized her immediately.
Not from memory.
From the only photograph she possessed of her mother.
The hair was different. The clothes more expensive. But the eyes were the same.
Thomas continued carefully.
“Her legal name was Arabella Sterling.”
Maya looked down at the open ring.
“The orchid?”
“The private emblem of the Sterling family trust. Only four rings were made.”
“One was buried with her?”
“That’s what the family was told.”
Maya’s mind resisted every word.
Her mother had raised her in small apartments, moved frequently, and refused to speak about relatives. She worked nights, paid rent in cash, and never allowed photographs near the windows.
Maya thought it was poverty.
Perhaps it had been hiding.
“What happened to her?”
Thomas’s expression tightened.
“We don’t know the full truth.”
“I saw her body.”
“You were five. Are you certain?”
Maya opened her mouth.
Then stopped.
She remembered a hospital room.
A covered shape.
A social worker holding her shoulders.
No face.
No funeral.
She had spent the next year in foster care before being adopted by an elderly woman named Evelyn Vale, who died when Maya was eighteen.
“What does Julian want?”
“To confirm your identity.”
“And then?”
“That depends on what the ring contains.”
Maya looked again at the strip of film.
Thomas handed her a magnifying lens from the glove compartment.
The film did not hold only a photograph.
Tiny numbers ran along the bottom.
A date.
A bank reference.
And seven handwritten letters:
AURELIA
Thomas read them and went silent.
“What?” Maya asked.
He called Julian immediately.
“Sir, the ring contains an Aurelia reference.”
The voice from the speaker changed.
“Do not take her to the townhouse.”
Thomas straightened.
“Why?”
“Because someone inside the Sterling board just tried to access the family DNA archive.”
Maya’s stomach dropped.
“Who?”
Julian answered.
“My brother.”
The line went dead.
Thomas turned the car onto another road.
Behind them, headlights appeared.
One vehicle.
Then two.
Maya looked through the rear window.
A familiar light-blue blazer was visible in the passenger seat of the first SUV.
Richard had found them.
But he wasn’t following alone.
Olivia sat beside him.
May you like
And Maya finally understood why Richard had always insisted she wear the orchid ring in public.
He had known someone was searching for it.
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