Chapter 3 - THE SILVER WATCH
“Right before she gave birth.”
The words echoed in the grand dining room of Bellissimo.
Richard stared at the swinging silver watch, his breathing shallow and rapid. “I have a son?”
“You had a son,” Vanessa corrected, her voice dripping with malice. She snapped the watch shut. The sharp click sounded like a gunshot. “If you want to make sure he stays safe, you’ll walk out that door with me. Now.”
She turned on her expensive heels and marched toward the exit, expecting the billionaire to follow like a well-trained dog.
But Richard didn’t move.
Instead, he turned to the head waiter, who was standing frozen near the kitchen doors. “Lock the doors. Call the police.”
Vanessa stopped dead in her tracks. “Are you insane? Richard, if the police get involved, you will never see your son. I am the only one who knows where Elizabeth and the boy are.”
“You’re bluffing,” Richard said, though his hands shook.
“Am I?” Vanessa sneered. She looked at Dr. Whitmore, who was inching toward the exit. “Tell him, Harold. Tell him how thorough I am.”
Dr. Whitmore swallowed hard. “Richard... she’s not bluffing. Six years ago, after I altered Elizabeth’s face, Margaret took her away. I never saw Elizabeth again. But Margaret kept paying my retainer. She told me it was 'insurance' in case the boy ever came looking for his father.”
Richard closed his eyes, the devastation washing over him. Twenty years of mourning a dead wife, only to find out she was alive. Only to find out she had carried his child.
I looked at the silver watch in Vanessa’s hand. Something about it was bothering me.
“Mr. Sterling,” I said quietly.
He opened his eyes and looked at me.
“May I see the back of that photograph?” I pointed to the picture of Elizabeth that had fallen from Vanessa’s purse earlier. It was still sitting on the table.
Richard picked it up and handed it to me.
I flipped it over. The handwritten date was there: June 14, 2006. But beneath the date, written in faint blue ink, was a string of numbers.
34-12-88
“Do these numbers mean anything to you?” I asked him.
Richard squinted at the back of the photo. His brow furrowed. “No. It looks like a combination for a lock, or maybe a locker number.”
Vanessa’s face twitched. It was a micro-expression, but having worked in customer service and medical reception for years, I knew panic when I saw it. She desperately wanted that photograph back.
“Give me that,” Vanessa snarled, stepping toward me.
“Don’t touch her,” Richard warned, stepping between us.
I kept staring at the numbers. They weren't a combination. They were a format.
“Mr. Sterling... this isn’t a locker number,” I said, my heart beginning to race. “It’s a patient ID. The clinic Dr. Whitmore and I worked at used this exact format. Two digits for the year the file was opened, two for the month, and a random identifier.”
I looked at Dr. Whitmore. “Patient 34. Opened in December. 1988?”
Dr. Whitmore’s face drained of the little color it had left. “How could you possibly know that format? You were just a receptionist.”
“I paid attention,” I said firmly. “And I know that file 34-12-88 wasn’t Elizabeth’s file. Elizabeth’s file was from six years ago. 2020. This file is from 1988.”
I looked at Vanessa.
“This is your file, isn’t it Margaret?” I asked.
Vanessa’s jaw clenched. She gripped the silver watch so tightly her knuckles turned white.
“Richard,” she said, her voice shaking with a new, raw desperation. “We are leaving. Now. Or I swear on my life, you will receive your son's ashes in a shoebox.”
Richard didn’t move. He looked at Dr. Whitmore. “What is in file 34-12-88?”
The doctor looked at the floor. “Richard... Margaret didn't come to me six years ago just to change Elizabeth's face.”
“Then what did she come for?”
“Thirty years ago,” the doctor whispered, “Margaret was in a terrible accident. Her face was destroyed. The woman you married... the face you look at every morning...”
The doctor pointed a shaking finger at Vanessa.
“That isn't Margaret's original face. She paid me to reconstruct it. And she brought a photograph of the exact face she wanted.”
Richard stared at his wife in horror. “Whose face?”
“Mine,” a voice said from the back of the restaurant.
Everyone turned.
Standing near the kitchen doors, wearing a Bellissimo chef’s coat, was our head pastry chef, Anna.
But as she stepped into the light, I realized the terrifying truth.
May you like
Anna wasn't Anna.
She had the exact same face as Vanessa Sterling.
