Chapter 3 - THE PHOTOGRAPH NOBODY WAS SUPPOSED TO SEE
Naomi stepped out of the gown before anyone could help her.
"Julian?"
He looked up from the cuff he was adjusting.
"What's wrong?"
"Who was Vanessa talking to?"
His expression barely changed, but Naomi knew him well enough to notice the pause.
"I don't know."
"She mentioned a photograph."
Julian's jaw tightened.
"Did you hear anything else?"
"She said, 'The woman in the photograph.' Then she said she hadn't known who you were."
He glanced toward the corridor.
"Stay here for a minute."
Naomi caught his wrist.
"Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Decide something is too complicated for me to understand and then walk away to handle it alone."
His face softened.
"That's not what I'm doing."
"Then tell me what's happening."
Before he could answer, Vanessa returned.
Her professional smile was back in place, but her fingers were trembling.
"Mr. Hartwell, there's been a small administrative issue. I'd like to speak with you privately."
"No," Naomi said.
Vanessa blinked.
Naomi stepped beside Julian.
"If it's about me, you can say it here."
For the first time, Vanessa looked genuinely uncertain.
"I was contacted by someone who claimed to know you. They asked whether you'd attended an appointment here today."
"Who?"
"I can't disclose private communications."
Julian's expression hardened.
"Then you shouldn't have made that call in front of my fiancée."
Vanessa swallowed.
"I was trying to protect the business."
"From what?"
She didn't answer.
Julian took out his phone and called his assistant, Marcus.
"Get me the original appointment authorization and the name of the person who accessed it. I want the access history, not a summary."
He listened.
"Now, Marcus."
He ended the call.
Naomi folded her arms.
"Someone knew I'd be here."
"It appears so."
"Someone who knew what I looked like."
Julian looked at her.
"Maybe."
"Julian, stop saying maybe when you already suspect something."
He exhaled slowly.
"There's a photograph I haven't shown you."
The room seemed to tilt.
"Of whom?"
"You."
Naomi stared at him.
"I've never seen it."
"I know."
"Then how do you have a photograph of me that I don't know about?"
"I don't have it. I saw it six months ago in a file connected to the Hartwell Foundation."
Her mind raced.
Six months ago, she had been working in the cardiac unit at St. Catherine's. Julian had been visiting the hospital frequently after funding a new pediatric treatment program.
They'd met in an elevator when she was carrying a sleeping toddler back to his room.
Julian had asked why she was crying.
She'd told him she wasn't.
He'd handed her a tissue anyway.
Three weeks later, he'd brought coffee to the nurses' station.
Three months after that, he'd asked her to dinner.
There had been nothing mysterious about their beginning.
At least, she'd thought there hadn't been.
"What was in the file?" she asked.
Julian looked uncomfortable.
"A photograph of a little girl. Maybe four years old. She was standing beside a woman who looked like you."
"Looked like me?"
"Same eyes. Same blond hair. Same small scar above the left eyebrow."
Naomi went still.
She had a scar there from falling off a bicycle when she was seven.
"The woman was wearing a hospital bracelet," Julian continued. "The picture was old, probably fifteen or twenty years. There was a handwritten note on the back, but I didn't get a clear look at it."
"Where is the photograph now?"
"I don't know."
"Who showed it to you?"
"My father."
Naomi felt the answer like a cold hand against her spine.
Julian's father, Richard Hartwell, had died two years earlier after a sudden heart attack. Naomi had met him only once, through an old photograph in Julian's library.
"He knew me?"
"I don't think he knew you personally."
"But he had a photograph of me."
"Of someone who looked like you."
Naomi stepped away.
For months, Julian had been patient with her reluctance to join his world. He never insisted she attend his business dinners. He never corrected her when she introduced him as a businessman instead of a billionaire. He had never made her feel that she needed to become someone else to deserve him.
Now she wondered whether their meeting had been a coincidence.
"Did you approach me because of that picture?"
"No."
The answer came immediately.
"Naomi, I met you in that elevator. I fell in love with you because you were you. I didn't know your name was connected to anything in my father's files until weeks after we started dating."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I couldn't establish a connection. And because I didn't want to turn something good into a mystery before I understood it."
She looked at him for a long moment.
"That decision belonged to you. Not me."
"I know."
He didn't defend himself.
Somehow, that made the hurt worse.
Tessa appeared at the fitting-room door, holding a small envelope.
"Ms. Bennett? I found this tucked inside the garment bag when I was checking the dress."
Vanessa appeared behind her.
"That doesn't belong here."
Tessa looked startled.
"It was inside the bag."
Julian took the envelope.
The front bore Naomi's full name in black ink.
Inside was a photograph.
It showed a little girl standing beside a hospital bed. The child had blond hair, blue eyes, and a small scar above her left eyebrow.
Naomi stopped breathing.
She knew that face.
Not from childhood memories.
From the mirror.
The woman standing behind the child wore a nurse's uniform. Her face was partially obscured, but the hand resting on the girl's shoulder had a distinctive crescent-shaped birthmark near the thumb.
Naomi had the same mark.
She turned the photograph over.
Three words had been written on the back.
SHE WAS NEVER YOURS.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Then Naomi looked at Julian.
"Who was the little girl?"
He stared at the photograph.
"I think it's you."
Naomi's knees weakened.
Before she could respond, Julian's phone vibrated.
Marcus had sent a message.
One line.
The appointment was authorized by someone using your late father's private account.
A second message appeared.
The account was accessed from inside the Hartwell estate twenty minutes ago.
Naomi looked toward the salon doors.
Someone had known she would be here.
Someone had planted the photograph inside the dress.
And someone had just accessed a dead man's private account to make sure they found it.
May you like
Then Julian received a final message from an unknown number.
Ask your fiancée what happened to her mother in 1998.
