He had watched the entire scene from across the room.
His face was strangely calm.
Too calm.
“Marguerite,” he said. “Enough.”
She turned.
“Richard.”
“She’s a servant.”
Marguerite stared at him.
“You didn't even look at her.”
Richard's expression hardened.
“I know exactly who she is.”
That sentence made Elena look at him.
For the first time that evening, she felt something she could not explain.
Recognition.
Not of his face.
Of his voice.
A memory flashed through her mind.
A dark hallway.
Rain against glass.
A man's voice saying:
“Don't let her wake up.”
Elena's breathing stopped.
The ballroom seemed to tilt.
A silver spoon slipped from a waiter's hand.
The sound brought her back.
Richard was still staring at her.
And now Elena knew something.
He was afraid.
Elena left the ballroom before anyone could stop her.
She locked herself inside a service corridor and pressed her back against the wall.
Her hands were shaking.
She had spent her entire life believing she had no family.
She had grown up in a small children's home outside Lyon.
She had been told that she had been found near a roadside when she was four years old.
No parents.
No identification.
No memories.
Only one name.
Elena.
She had never questioned it.
Until tonight.
A woman in a maid's uniform had given her the job at the Laurent gala because the agency needed emergency staff.
She had never known the event belonged to the family connected to her past.
She had never known Vanessa Laurent existed.
She had never known Richard Laurent.
But Richard knew her.
She could feel it.
The service door opened.
An elderly man entered.
It was Daniel Moreau, the Laurent family's former estate manager.
He closed the door behind him.
“Elena.”
She looked at him.
“How do you know my name?”
“I don't.”
He swallowed.
“Not the name you were given.”
Elena's heart began pounding.
Daniel reached inside his jacket.
He pulled out an old photograph.
He handed it to her.
A little girl stood beside a woman in a white dress.
The child had dark hair.
A small crescent-shaped scar near her thumb.
And a birthmark beneath her left shoulder.
Elena stared at the photograph.
The world became silent.
“Who is that woman?”
“Your mother.”
Elena looked up.
“No.”
“Her name was Camille Laurent.”
“No.”
“You are Aurelia Laurent.”
Elena dropped the photograph.
“No.”
Daniel's voice broke.
“I was there that night.”
“What night?”
“The night they buried you.”
Elena stopped breathing.
Daniel looked toward the door.
“Your mother discovered that Richard had been moving money from the family trust.”