Chapter 2 - The Woman Dragan Never Forgot
Nadia could barely hear the rain anymore.
“You knew my mother?”
Dragan looked at the locket in his palm.
For several seconds, he seemed to forget Clarissa, the servants, even the mansion around him.
“I knew someone who wore this.”
Nadia stepped closer.
“My mother?”
“Maybe.”
That answer frustrated her.
“My mother died ten years ago.”
Dragan’s eyes lifted.
“In the garment workshop fire.”
Nadia stopped breathing.
She had not told him that.
“How do you know?”
Clarissa suddenly stepped between them.
“This is absurd. Theodore is expecting guests, and we’re turning a disciplinary matter into melodrama.”
Dragan looked at her.
“Leave.”
Clarissa blinked.
“This is my fiancé’s house.”
“And she works for your fiancé. Not you.”
Clarissa’s jaw tightened.
For a moment Nadia thought she would argue.
Instead she smiled.
It was the polished smile from magazine covers.
“Of course.”
She handed the scissors to a maid.
Then she walked away.
Dragan watched until she disappeared.
Only then did he return the locket.
“Keep this somewhere safer.”
Nadia closed her fingers around it.
“What did you know about my mother?”
Before Dragan could answer, Theodore entered.
“What happened?”
His expression collapsed when he saw Nadia.
“Nadia?”
He crossed the room.
“Who did this?”
Nobody answered.
He looked at the hair on the floor.
Then toward the doorway where Clarissa had disappeared.
Understanding came slowly.
Then painfully.
“No.”
Nadia had never seen Theodore angry.
Not once in seven years.
Now his hands trembled.
“I want everyone out except Nadia, Dragan and Oswald.”
The servants left.
Oswald remained near the door.
Nadia explained.
Not dramatically.
That made it worse.
She told Theodore about the rain.
The accusations.
The scissors.
When she finished, Theodore sat down.
“I brought that woman into this house.”
Nadia immediately said, “Mr. Hawthorne—”
“No. Don’t protect me from responsibility.”
He looked older suddenly.
“I should have seen it.”
Dragan interrupted.
“There’s something else.”
He showed Theodore the symbol on Nadia’s locket.
Theodore’s face changed.
“You recognize it?”
“Yes.”
Nadia looked between them.
“What is it?”
Neither answered immediately.
Finally Theodore turned toward Oswald.
“Lock the doors.”
Oswald obeyed.
Dragan spoke.
“Ten years ago, your mother’s workshop was owned through a chain of shell companies.”
Nadia frowned.
“I know. The newspapers said the owners disappeared.”
“They didn’t disappear.”
Dragan’s voice remained controlled.
“They changed names.”
Nadia felt cold.
“The fire was ruled an electrical accident.”
“It was.”
“But?”
Dragan studied her.
“But people died because safety doors had been illegally chained shut.”
Nadia knew that.
Every family did.
What she did not know was why Dragan seemed personally connected.
“I was twenty-four,” he continued. “I worked around the docks then. Not legally. Not proudly.”
Theodore looked away.
“One night, a woman came looking for me.”
Nadia’s heart began pounding.
“She worked at the garment shop. She had discovered invoices showing that management knew the exits were being locked during shifts.”
“Elena?”
Dragan nodded.
“She was terrified.”
Nadia sat down.
Her knees would no longer support her.
“She gave me copies.”
“Why you?”
“Because the police officer she approached had warned the factory owner.”
Nadia closed her eyes.
Dragan continued.
“Your mother believed someone was going to destroy the evidence.”
“The fire.”
“Yes.”
“You said it was electrical.”
“The fire may have been accidental. What happened afterward wasn’t. Records vanished. Witnesses were paid. Inspectors changed statements.”
Nadia gripped the locket.
“Did my mother know?”
“She suspected.”
“Why didn’t you save her?”
The question came out harsher than Nadia intended.
Dragan accepted it.
“I tried.”
For the first time, pain appeared openly on his face.
“I arrived seventeen minutes too late.”
Nadia turned away.
Ten years of grief pressed against her chest.
Dragan continued softly.
“I found your mother near a rear exit.”
Nadia’s eyes filled.
“She was alive?”
“For less than a minute.”
Nadia covered her mouth.
Dragan’s voice lowered.
“She made me promise something.”
“What?”
“To find her daughters.”
Nadia stared at him.
“Daughters?”
“You and Mila.”
Dragan had known their names for ten years.
The realization frightened her.
“Why didn’t you find us?”
“I did.”
Nadia stepped back.
“What?”
“I found the apartment.”
“Then where were you?”
“You had already left.”
Nadia remembered.
After the fire, she and Mila had spent months moving between relatives, shelters and cheap rentals.
“I searched for almost two years.”
Dragan looked at the locket.
“Then the trail disappeared.”
Nadia could not decide whether she wanted to cry or scream.
Oswald suddenly cleared his throat.
“There may be more.”
Everyone turned.
The elderly butler approached.
“Three years ago, when Miss Mila required surgery, Mr. Hawthorne asked me to gather the necessary paperwork.”
Theodore nodded.
“I remember.”
“One document contained Elena Voskin’s employment history.”
Oswald looked uncomfortable.
“I recognized the company.”
Theodore stood.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I was uncertain.”
“Which company?”
Oswald answered.
“Hawthorne Textiles.”
Theodore went pale.
Nadia stared at him.
“No.”
Theodore shook his head immediately.
“My father sold our textile holdings before that fire.”
Oswald nodded.
“Officially.”
Dragan understood first.
“Shell ownership.”
“Yes.”
The room went silent.
Nadia looked at Theodore.
The man who had paid for Mila’s surgery.
The man she had trusted.
The family whose house she had served for seven years.
“You owned the workshop?”
“No.”
Theodore’s voice cracked.
“Nadia, I swear to you, I didn’t know.”
Dragan studied him.
“I believe him.”
“Why?”
“Because Theodore was twenty-two and living overseas when the fire happened.”
Theodore looked devastated.
“My father handled everything.”
Nadia remembered Theodore’s father, Augustus Hawthorne.
He had died six years earlier.
A celebrated philanthropist.
His portrait still hung in the east corridor.
Nadia had dusted it hundreds of times.
Suddenly she wanted to tear it from the wall.
Oswald spoke again.
“There is something else.”
From inside his jacket he removed a small brass key.
“I found this in Augustus Hawthorne’s desk after his death.”
Theodore stared.
“What does it open?”
“I never discovered that.”
Dragan took the key.
A number was engraved on it.
317.
Nadia’s mind flashed back to the conversation outside Theodore’s study.
You said the documents were destroyed.
They were supposed to be.
What about the girl?
She doesn’t know what she has.
Nadia stood abruptly.
“I heard Clarissa talking to someone.”
She repeated everything.
Dragan’s expression hardened.
“When?”
“Three days ago.”
“Did she see you?”
“I don’t know.”
Dragan looked at Theodore.
“Clarissa’s interest in Nadia isn’t jealousy.”
Theodore slowly understood.
“She thinks Nadia has something.”
“But I don’t,” Nadia insisted.
Dragan looked at the locket.
“Maybe you do.”
Nadia examined it.
She had opened it hundreds of times.
Inside was a faded photograph of her mother holding baby Mila.
Nothing else.
Dragan took it carefully.
He ran his thumb along the edge.
Then stopped.
“This backing is too thick.”
He pressed a fingernail into a tiny seam.
The interior panel popped loose.
Something fell into Nadia’s palm.
A narrow strip of yellowed paper.
On it, written in Elena Voskin’s handwriting, were five words:
Hawthorne Station. Locker 317. Trust nobody.
Theodore stared at Oswald’s brass key.
Locker 317.
Dragan looked toward the dark windows.
“We go tonight.”
But Oswald was no longer looking at the paper.
He was staring through the greenhouse doors.
May you like
A black sedan was speeding away from the estate.
“That,” he whispered, “is Clarissa’s car.”
