Chapter 3 - CLAIRE
Claire Hayes was eighteen.
My biological daughter.
Born two years before Violet.
I had no memory of her birth because she had not been born to Harper.
Her mother was Captain Laura Bennett, an intelligence officer who disappeared after a classified operation seventeen years earlier.
Laura and I had been together briefly during officer training.
She never told me she was pregnant.
Army records declared her killed overseas.
Claire was placed inside a protected family program.
The documents in my metal box included her sealed identity.
I had received them six months earlier during an internal review.
I did not tell Harper because the program warned disclosure could endanger Claire.
Another secret justified by protection.
Harper learned about Claire after finding my hidden box while I was deployed.
General Brooks contacted her soon after.
He claimed Claire had been kidnapped and only the classified drive could locate her.
The man wearing my face told Harper he had escaped captivity and needed access.
She believed him.
Violet did not.
The false Ethan demanded Claire’s file.
Violet had already removed the memory card and birthday envelope from the box.
She tried to protect the secret sister she had discovered independently.
Then Claire called my phone.
Alive.
Terrified.
She said the man wearing my face was named Nathan Cole.
May you like
He had raised her inside the family-protection program.
She called him Dad.
