Chapter 1 The Dead Girl in the Photograph

The dead girl in the photograph had my face.

I was staring at it when the first bullet shattered the window behind me.

Glass exploded across the records room. I dropped instinctively, clutching the photograph against my chest as someone shouted from the corridor.

"Get down!"

I didn't need to be told twice.

Another shot tore through the filing cabinet above my head.

My hands shook, but my mind was already working.

Two shots. One shooter, judging by the angle. The emergency exit was six feet to my left, but the corridor offered no protection. My phone lay beside the overturned chair, its screen cracked. The photograph was the only thing I'd managed to save from the fireproof archive box.

And someone was willing to kill me for it.

Ten minutes earlier, my biggest problem had been whether the hospital would extend my foster mother's payment arrangement for another week.

Now I was crouching in a room full of stolen identities, holding proof that I might be one of them.

The photograph showed a little girl of perhaps four, standing beside a swimming pool. She wore a white dress and a tiny gold bracelet. Behind her stood a silver-haired woman whose expression was unmistakably familiar.

My mother.

Not the woman who had raised me. My biological mother-the woman whose face had appeared on a hospital identification record I'd discovered three days earlier.

The woman I'd been told had died giving birth to me.

Someone had written three words on the back of the photograph.

THE HEIR SURVIVED.

A man's voice came from the doorway.

"Miss Vale?"

I turned.

He stood framed by smoke and broken glass, tall and broad-shouldered in a black suit that looked absurdly expensive for a building scheduled for demolition. His dark hair was damp from the rain. His face was the kind that made people look twice, but his expression suggested he had never needed anyone to like him.

His eyes moved from the photograph to me.

For one strange second, he looked as if he'd seen a ghost.

Then he extended his hand.

"Come with me if you want to live."

"Who are you?"

"Adrian Blackwell."

The name struck me before I could stop it.

Blackwell Holdings. Manhattan's most ruthless private investment empire. Its founder had died six years ago, leaving behind a fortune large enough to influence elections, buy newspapers, and make entire companies disappear.

And the Blackwell family had been connected to the disappearance of a little girl twenty-four years earlier.

I didn't take his hand.

"Why should I trust you?"

"You shouldn't."

Another shot struck the doorframe.

Adrian's jaw tightened. He crossed the room, caught my wrist, and pulled me behind the concrete pillar just as a third bullet tore through the space where I'd been sitting.

I hated how quickly my body responded to his touch.

I hated even more that he seemed to notice.

"Can you run?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Good. Don't stop until I tell you."

He pulled a compact pistol from inside his jacket.

My stomach dropped.

"You brought a gun?"

"I came expecting trouble."

"Then perhaps you should have warned me before walking into my life."

His gaze flicked to mine. "Believe me, Miss Vale. If I'd known you were still alive, I would have come a long time ago."

Before I could demand an explanation, he fired once toward the corridor.

We ran.

The records room opened into a narrow service passage. Adrian moved with the confidence of a man who knew exactly where every door led. I followed, my shoes slipping on the wet floor, the photograph crumpled in my fist.

We reached a steel door.

He punched a code into the panel.

Nothing happened.

"Someone changed it," he muttered.

"Can you open it?"

"I'm trying."

Behind us, footsteps approached.

I looked at the panel. The lock was electronic, but the maintenance cover had been removed. A thin bundle of exposed wires sat beneath it.

"Move."

Adrian stared at me.

"What?"

"Unless you'd prefer to explain to the police why we're standing in a corridor with a dead body."

I pulled a metal hairpin from my bun, bent it, and connected two exposed contacts. The panel flashed red, then green.

The door clicked.

Adrian looked at the lock, then at me.

"Interesting."

"Try not to sound so surprised."

We burst into the underground parking garage.

A black SUV waited beside the exit ramp. Its driver was slumped over the steering wheel.

Dead.

I stopped.

Adrian swore under his breath.

Then every light in the garage went out.

A hand grabbed my shoulder. I swung my elbow backward, connected with something solid, and heard a curse.

"It's me," Adrian hissed.

"Then stop grabbing me!"

A distant engine roared.

Adrian shoved me behind a concrete support as a vehicle shot through the darkness toward us. Its headlights swept across the garage. For an instant, I saw two silhouettes inside.

The passenger raised a phone toward us.

A camera flash illuminated Adrian's face.

Then the vehicle vanished up the ramp.

"They wanted a picture," I whispered.

"No." Adrian's expression had turned frighteningly cold. "They wanted confirmation."

"Confirmation of what?"

He reached into his jacket and produced a second photograph.

It showed the same little girl beside the swimming pool.

But this time, a red circle had been drawn around her wrist.

The bracelet.

My hand went numb.

I had worn that same bracelet for as long as I could remember. My foster mother had told me it was the only thing left from the day she'd found me outside a clinic in Nairobi. She'd kept the truth from me because she was afraid I'd go searching for a family that had never wanted me.

I'd never believed her completely.

Now I didn't know what to believe.

Adrian looked at my wrist.

"Where did you get that bracelet?"

"Why?"

"Because the girl in that photograph was declared dead twenty-four years ago."

He paused.

"And because her name was Seraphina Blackwell."

The garage suddenly felt too small.

"That isn't my name."

"No," he said. "Your name is Elena Vale."

He took a breath, and for the first time, his composure cracked.

"But if that bracelet is genuine, you may be the only surviving heir to the Blackwell dynasty."

I laughed once. It came out sharp and frightened.

"Then why would anyone want me dead?"

Adrian glanced toward the exit.

"Because tomorrow morning, my family intends to announce the engagement of its new chairman."

"And what does that have to do with me?"

His eyes returned to mine.

"The chairman is my uncle, Victor Blackwell. He's spent twenty-four years convincing the world that you're dead."

A siren sounded somewhere above us.

Adrian opened the passenger door of his SUV.

"Get in, Elena."

I looked down at the photograph again.

The dead girl stared back at me.

For the first time in my life, I wondered whether the people who had raised me had saved me from a terrible family-or stolen me from one.

I climbed into the vehicle.

As Adrian started the engine, my phone vibrated in my pocket.

One message. No number.

ASK ADRIAN WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR MOTHER.

I turned toward him.

He saw the message.

And the man who had walked into a gunfight without blinking suddenly looked afraid.