CHAPTER 3 — The Secret Buried Before She Was Born
At sunrise, Chloe woke inside a bedroom larger than her entire apartment.
She bolted upright.
Silk sheets.
Floor-to-ceiling windows.
Security cameras.
She wasn't home.
She was inside Dominic Moretti's estate.
Panic hit instantly.
She rushed to the door.
Locked.
Not from the outside.
From a biometric system.
A calm female voice spoke through hidden speakers.
"Good morning, Miss Bennett. Mr. Moretti requests breakfast."
"I want to leave!"
"We've already attempted that."
"What does that mean?"
The answer came from behind her.
"Someone planted a bomb under your car."
Dominic stood in the doorway.
He hadn't made a sound.
Chloe stared.
"You're lying."
Without speaking, he handed her a tablet.
Security footage.
Her apartment parking garage.
At 4:11 a.m.
A man in a maintenance uniform crouched beneath her aging Honda Civic.
Thirty seconds later...
He walked away.
At 6:02...
Boston police robots detonated an explosive powerful enough to destroy half the garage.
Her knees weakened.
"I don't understand..."
"You weren't supposed to."
Dominic placed another photograph on the table.
It wasn't recent.
It showed a hospital maternity ward from twenty-four years ago.
A nurse holding two newborn girls.
One bracelet read:
CHLOE BENNETT.
The other...
Had been scratched away.
Dominic looked at her carefully.
"Last night wasn't about me."
Silence.
"They wanted to know whether I'd protect you."
"Why?"
"Because someone has spent twenty-four years looking for a child who disappeared from that hospital."
Chloe frowned.
"My mother gave birth to me."
"Did she?"
Dominic slid one final document across the table.
DNA.
Birth records.
Hospital files.
Every page carried the same red stamp.
SEALED BY FEDERAL ORDER.
At the bottom was one handwritten sentence.
Only one of the twins survived... officially.
Dominic's voice became almost a whisper.
"I think..."
He looked directly into Chloe's eyes.
"...you were never supposed to exist."
Outside the mansion, more than thirty black SUVs suddenly surrounded the estate.
Armed men poured through the gates.
Snipers took positions on nearby rooftops.
A drone exploded above the garden.
The war had begun.
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And Chloe Bennett had just learned she wasn't a waitress caught in the wrong place...
She was the missing piece of a secret powerful enough to make every criminal syndicate in Boston come hunting for her.
