Chapter 3 - The Investigator’s Findings
The penthouse office was dark save for the amber glow of city lights piercing through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Elliot hadn't slept. He sat behind his massive mahogany desk, surrounded by financial reports that suddenly meant nothing, staring at a thick manila folder Marcus had dropped off an hour earlier.
The folder lay open. Elliot’s fingers traced a faded photograph clipped to the top page.
It was a picture of Margot Liry taken in her early twenties. She had the same distinct amber eyes as his mother, the same slight curve of the jawline that Elliot saw every time he looked in the mirror.
"My God," Elliot whispered.
According to the documents, Margot Liry had grown up under a series of foster families in upstate New York, carrying no memory of her true origins prior to the age of seven. She had suffered from dissociative amnesia following a severe trauma in her childhood—a trauma involving a winter storm, a missing child case, and a frantic separation. She had lived a quiet, struggling life, working as a freelance seamstress, raising little Laya alone until cancer claimed her body.
Margot Liry was Maisie. His little sister. She had survived, but her memory had been shattered, and she had spent her entire life not knowing who she truly was, carrying the very doll Elliot had made for her as her only anchor to a past she couldn't remember.
And Laya... Laya was his niece.
A sudden, sharp pain clutched at Elliot’s chest. The little girl’s words echoed in his mind, cutting deeper than any corporate betrayal or board room defeat: “Are we born to be loved, or do we have to earn it? Because my mom left me.”
She thought she was entirely alone in the world. She thought love was something conditional, something she had to earn because her mother had died and left her behind in a cold orphanage.
Elliot stood up so abruptly his chair rolled back and crashed against the glass wall.
May you like
He looked at his watch. It was 4:30 AM.
He didn't care about the hour. He reached for his coat. For the first time in thirty-one years, Elliot Vance wasn't running from his past; he was racing toward it.
