Chapter 5 - The Hidden Truth
I began searching the nursery for anything that could act as a lockpick.
I finally settled on a thick metal hairclip I had stolen from Rosa's supply closet.
That night, when the house went completely dark and Leo was fast asleep, I crept back to the forbidden hallway.
My hands shook as I manipulated the cheap wire inside the heavy iron padlock.
My mother had dated a locksmith when I was a teenager, and the idle tricks he taught me were finally paying off.
With a satisfying click, the padlock gave way.
I slipped inside the black doors and closed them silently behind me.
The room was untouched, preserved perfectly like a shrine to a murdered queen.
Dresses worth more than my entire life hung in the open closet.
Bottles of dried-up perfume sat on the vanity, surrounding a silver-framed mirror.
I walked over to the desk, running my fingers over the elegant stationery left scattered there.
Hidden beneath a false bottom in the top drawer, my fingers brushed against a small, leather-bound book.
It was a diary.
I opened the pages, turning on a tiny penlight to read the ink.
The breath left my lungs in a violent rush.
The handwriting was exactly like mine.
Every loop, every slanted letter, every crossed 't' was identical to the way I wrote my own name.
I flipped to an entry dated ten months ago.
"Dante thinks the baby will save our marriage, but he does not know the truth about my family."
"He does not know that my mother lied to him."
"He does not know that there were two of us born that night in the clinic."
Tears spilled over my eyelashes and hit the aged paper.
Two of us.
A twin sister.
My mother, the woman who raised me in poverty and fear, had kept the greatest secret of all.
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Elena was my sister.
And she had been murdered for a life I was now being forced to live.
