Chapter 2 - Noah Whispers About Daddy’s Other Ring
Daniel barely heard Noah over the crying.
“She took your ring.”
Daniel looked down at his left hand.
His wedding band was still there.
“What ring, buddy?”
Noah pointed toward Victoria.
“The other one.”
Victoria’s face changed.
Claire stopped wiping blood from the scratch on her cheek.
Daniel noticed both reactions.
“What other ring?”
Noah said Victoria kept a ring that looked exactly like Daniel’s inside the locked drawer in the upstairs study. Sometimes, when Daniel traveled, a man came to the mansion wearing it.
Victoria interrupted.
“He’s four. He makes things up.”
Claire looked at Daniel.
“No, he doesn’t.”
The room went silent.
Claire admitted she had seen the man twice. Victoria told staff he was Daniel’s cousin and ordered everyone to stay out of the west wing.
Daniel had no cousin matching Claire’s description.
Then Claire explained her scratches.
That afternoon she caught Victoria searching Noah’s bedroom. Claire asked what she was doing. Victoria attacked her and threatened to have her arrested for theft if she spoke.
Noah ran into the foyer.
Victoria followed.
That was when Daniel arrived.
Daniel called security and police. He did not interrogate Noah further. A child specialist would handle that carefully.
Victoria was removed from the house pending investigation.
Before leaving, she said one sentence.
“You’re going to destroy your own family over a child’s story.”
Daniel looked at Noah behind Claire.
“No. I’m finally going to listen to it.”
Security opened Victoria’s locked study drawer under police supervision.
Inside was a wedding band.
It looked almost identical to Daniel’s.
But engraved inside were initials Daniel had never seen:
May you like
D.M. — E.H.
And beneath the ring sat a photograph of Daniel himself entering a hotel on a night he knew he had been three hundred miles away.
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