Chapter 46 - The Boy at the FountainThe meeting took place inside a private gallery overlooking Central Park.
Federal agents occupied the adjacent rooms. Elias's security detail remained outside the building.
Neither sibling carried a weapon.
Claire arrived first.
She placed their mother's photograph on a glass table.
Then she waited.
At precisely eleven, the doors opened.
Elias Vance stepped inside.
Claire rose from her chair.
For a moment, she forgot every question she had prepared.
He had her gray eyes.
The same dark hair.
The same small scar beside his left eyebrow that she had remembered from childhood.
Elias stopped several feet away.
"You're shorter than I expected."
Claire laughed unexpectedly.
It was a small, broken sound.
"And you're considerably less charming."
His expression flickered.
Then the cold mask returned.
"Don't mistake this meeting for a reunion."
"I wasn't planning to."
He sat opposite her.
"Sabine says you knew I was alive."
"Sabine is lying."
"She says our mother sent me away because I was the son Julian intended to make his heir."
"She spent years trying to find you."
Elias's jaw tightened.
"Do you have proof?"
Claire pushed Evelyn's letter toward him.
He didn't touch it.
"Anyone can forge handwriting."
"Then read it with me. We'll have the original examined independently."
He stared at the letter.
After a long silence, he finally opened it.
Claire watched his eyes move across the pages.
At first, nothing changed.
Then his breathing became uneven.
He stopped at a paragraph describing their childhood.
A blue ribbon Claire had tied around the wooden horse he carried everywhere.
A white fountain.
A little boy who insisted he could climb higher than his sister.
Elias touched the scar near his eyebrow.
"That wasn't in any official file," he whispered.
Claire's eyes filled with tears.
"I know."
He looked up sharply.
"What happened that night?"
"I remember people shouting. Mother was holding my hand. You were ahead of us."
"And then?"
"Someone pulled you away."
Elias stood abruptly.
"I remember you watching."
"I was six years old."
"You were standing beside the fountain."
"Yes."
"You didn't come after me."
Claire rose too.
"I tried."
The words escaped before she could stop them.
"I remember screaming your name. I remember Mother pulling me backward because men were trying to take me too."
Elias looked away.
For twenty-four years, he had imagined a sister who had watched his suffering without caring.
Now that image was beginning to crack.
Claire stepped closer but did not touch him.
"You don't have to believe everything today."
She looked at the letter.
"But you deserve to know someone loved you before they taught you that love was weakness."
Elias remained silent.
Then he reached into his coat.
Claire stiffened.
But he withdrew only a small object wrapped in faded blue cloth.
A wooden horse.
One of its legs had been repaired with a thin piece of silver wire.
Claire covered her mouth.
"I kept it," Elias whispered.
"Why?"
He stared at the toy.
"Because it was the only thing I had left from before."
He placed it beside the photograph.
Then he walked toward the door.
At the threshold, he stopped.
"Claire."
She looked up.
"Sabine told me our mother died in a car accident."
Claire felt the room grow cold.
May you like
Elias turned his head.
"Was that another lie?"
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