Chapter 3 - The Ghost of Clara
The hum of the centrifuge machine in the adjoining private study sounded like a distant hornet, each second stretching into eternity as Elena ran the automated comparative markers on the portable sequencing terminal. I stood by the high arched window, overlooking the sweeping lawn and the dense forest that sloped downward toward the Delaware River.
Below, sitting comfortably on the veranda of the east wing with a silver coffee pot and the morning edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer, was my uncle Vincent. At sixty-five, he looked like a statesman—immaculate silver hair, tailored Italian tweed, and a calm, benevolent smile that had fooled every politician and crime boss from Boston to Miami for three decades. To the outside world, he was the elder statesman who had peacefully stepped aside to let his nephew take the throne.
"Damian," Elena called out, her voice barely above a whisper.
I turned around. Elena was staring at the glowing monitor, her face devoid of all color. She held the printed readout in her trembling fingers, looking up at me as if she were staring at a phantom returned from the grave.
"What does it say?" I demanded, crossing the hardwood floor in three long strides.
"She shares ninety-nine point nine percent of your immediate familial markers," Elena said, her voice shaking with suppressed emotion. "Damian... she isn't your daughter. She isn't your half-sister."
I frowned, staring down at the complicated numerical graphs. "Explain it in plain English, Elena."
"Her mitochondrial DNA carries an exact maternal match to Clara," Elena whispered.
The name hit my chest like a hollow-point bullet. The air left my lungs in an agonizing rush.
Clara.
My twin sister.
The sister who was supposed to have drowned in the river twenty-two years ago, on the exact same stormy night our father had collapsed in the boathouse. We had held an empty-casket funeral for her. Vincent had spent weeks comforting my grief-stricken mother, telling the family that Clara’s body had been swept out to the Atlantic through the river rapids, lost forever to the ocean tides.
"Clara died when we were eight years old," I choked out, my fists clenching so violently that my knuckles turned white.
"Her body was never found, Damian!" Elena countered, pointing a trembling finger at the DNA readouts. "This child is three years old. Her genetic markers prove beyond any medical shadow of a doubt that she is Clara’s biological daughter. Which means your sister didn't drown twenty-two years ago. She survived that night. She has been alive all this time."
My entire life—every sacrifice, every drop of blood I had spilled to protect the Romano family name, every prayer I had whispered at the family mausoleum—shattered into millions of jagged pieces. My father hadn't died of a heart attack. My sister hadn't drowned.
They had been erased.
"Where is she?" I whispered, the words rattling with a terrifying, lethal rage that had been building inside me for two decades. "If the girl is here, where is Clara?"
Before Elena could answer, the door to the master suite creaked. Mia had woken up. She stood by the side of the massive bed, her small hands clutching the frame, looking up at me with large, hazel eyes that were the mirror image of my own.
"Uncle Damian?" she asked, her voice small and fragile in the vast room.
My breath caught. "You know who I am, Mia?"
Mia nodded solemnly, pointing a small finger toward the pocket watch resting on my desk. "Mommy told me. She said if the men with the black masks broke the cottage door, I had to take Grandpa's clock and crawl through the water pipe under the weeping willow. She told me to look for the big man with the scar on his eyebrow who looks like her."
I dropped to my knees on the hardwood floor, meeting her gaze at eye level. For the first time since I was a boy, tears burned the backs of my eyes.
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"Where is your mommy right now, Mia?" I asked, keeping my voice as gentle as humanly possible while my soul screamed for vengeance.
Mia’s lower lip trembled, and a fat tear rolled down her dirt-streaked cheek. "The bad men locked her in the basement by the water. She told me to run, Uncle Damian. She said... she said Uncle Vincent was coming with the fire."
