Part 4 — Because of the Red Dress, Damian Stopped Talking, and a Few Minutes Later His Gaze Revealed Fear for the First Time

The phone slipped from my hand and fell onto the marble floor.

Damian immediately looked at Cole.

“Lock all the exits.”

“They are already locked.”

“No. The entire hotel. The guests too.”

My mother leaned against the wall. Her face was pale, but she was not crying. She was simply looking at the photograph in which a woman with her own face appeared.

“This is a lie,” she said.

“It may be,” I answered.

“No, Maria. She is my sister.”

Damian turned his head sharply.

“You never said you had a sister.”

“Because Alister killed her.”

At these words the ballroom seemed to grow even quieter.

Cole brought his phone to his ear.

“The police are outside the hotel,” he said. “Someone anonymously reported to them that weapons trading is taking place here.”

Damian smiled bitterly.

“Mercer is trying to buy time.”

“I am not leaving here,” I said.

“Maria, now for the first time you have to trust me.”

“For two years I have cleaned blood in your clinic and you never once asked who I was. Now you turn out to be my brother and tell me to trust you?”

Pain passed over his face.

“If I had known you were my sister, I would not have left you alone in even one room wearing that dress.”

It was the first time Damian had said aloud the true meaning of our awkward glances.

I lowered my eyes.

“That is the least important thing to me right now.”

“I know.”

His lawyer, Nora Feld, reached the hotel in ten minutes. She held a small tape recorder.

“I found this in Alister’s old house,” she said. “He recorded his own testimony before his death.”

Damian reached out his hand.

“Maria should hear it first.”

Nora pressed the button.

An old man’s hoarse voice sounded in the recording.

“If someone has found this recording, it means Mercer decided to go against me. Elena Bennett’s sister, Iris, is alive. I hid her for years because she knew how I wrote Maria’s birth certificate and why I transferred half of my inheritance into her name.”

My mother stopped breathing.

The recording continued.

“Maria’s mother Elena did not die. She resembled her sister and chose to hide in her place. If both women ever appear, trust only the girl. Everyone else is buried in my old deals.”

The tape recorder stopped.

No one spoke.

I looked at my mother.

“You are not Elena?”

The woman lowered her eyes.

“My real name is Iris. Elena was your aunt. I used her name so Mercer could not find me.”

The world fell apart around me, although the floor was still beneath my feet.

“Then where is my mother?”

A man suddenly appeared in the doorway. He held a small bag. I recognized his face—it was the waiter.

Security drew their weapons.

“Get on the floor!” Cole shouted.

The man did not move.

“I am not Mercer’s man,” he said. “I am your aunt.”

His voice was a woman’s.

Damian narrowed his eyes.

The woman removed an artificial mask from her face. Beneath it appeared a young, tired face. Her eyes were my eyes.

“Maria,” she said. “Your mother is alive, but not with Mercer. She left on her own to buy time for you.”

“Where is she?”

“In the underground vault where Alister hid all the documents.”

Damian signaled to Cole.

“The address.”

The woman handed over a small piece of paper. An old warehouse number was written on it.

We left in three cars. Snow was beginning outside. The silver medical watch touched the sleeve of my red silk dress. When I was a child, my mother told me never to take this watch off, because I always had to know the pulse—of others and of myself.

We found my mother in the vault.

She was sitting on an iron chair, her hands tied, but her eyes were completely calm.

“Maria,” she said.

I ran toward her.

Damian remained by the door.

When my mother saw him, she lowered her head.

“You are Alister’s son.”

“And Maria’s brother,” he replied.

“Then protect her as her father could not.”

Mercer was arrested that same night. Nora handed his records, accounts, and list of weapons shipments to the police. Cole confirmed that his fingerprints were on the poisoned glass.

I sat for hours at the police station, watching them play Damian his own words.

In the recording he said: “The girl is simply bait. If she dies, the loss is acceptable.”

Damian raised his head.

“Did I say that?”

Nora answered:

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Three years ago. When you still did not know that Maria was your sister.”

He closed his eyes.

At that moment he saw himself through someone else’s ears for the first time.

A week later his father’s house was empty. In Alister’s study I left only one thing—the copy of the old photograph in which my mother and her sister stood together.

My room, however, turned out to be emptier.

The red dress hung on the bed. A small trace of Damian’s fingerprints remained on its sleeve, where he had stopped my hand that night.

I did not throw the dress away.

I simply put it in the closet.

Three months later I left Boston. I began working at a small clinic in Portland. In the mornings I measured patients’ blood pressure, and in the evenings I walked along the shore and realized for the first time that silence did not always mean danger.

My mother lived with me. She still found it difficult to say her own name.

One evening a little girl who came for treatment drew two women and one man on a sheet of paper.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“Family,” she answered. “Everyone protects one another.”

I looked at the drawing for a long time.

Then I realized that family is not always the people who hide the truth from you. Sometimes family is the one who, in the end, still leaves you a choice.

Four months later I received a message from Damian.

“I sold part of the companies. I closed the clinic. If you ever need help, the number is the same.”

The second message came an hour later.

“I am not asking you to come back. I just want you to know that now I will no longer run from the truth.”

I put the phone down.

My mother asked from the kitchen:

“You are not going to answer?”

“No.”

“Why?”

I went to the window. The first snow was falling outside.

“Because forgiveness is possible, but opening the door again is not necessary.”

That night I took the red dress out of the closet and put the silver watch in its pocket.

Then I hung the dress by the window.

In the snow, the silk looked like fire.

And for the first time, when the watch counted my pulse, it was calm.