THE TWINS WHO CLAIMED ME

Jerry's thumb traced the inscription again, slower this time, as if the worn silver might surrender more secrets if he applied enough pressure. The lamp on his father's desk cast a weak golden glow across the locket's surface, illuminating the tiny grooves of the engraving I'd never noticed in ten years of wearing it against my skin.

E.D. 1999.

The year before the twins were born.

"How long have you had this?" Jerry asked, his voice stripped of its earlier bite. He wasn't looking at me. He was still staring at the locket, his jaw set in a hard line that made the resemblance to his father almost unbearable.

"Since I was twelve," I said. It was the truth, or close enough to it. "My mother left it to me when she died."

"Your mother," Jefferson repeated from behind me, his voice carrying a dangerous edge. "Eleanor Delaware."

The way he said her name slowly, deliberately, like he was testing the syllables for a lie sent a fresh spike of unease through me. I turned my head just enough to catch his expression. He was watching me with the kind of intensity that made me feel stripped bare, every layer of my carefully constructed disguise peeled back for his inspection.

"You know her name," I said. It wasn't a question.

Jefferson's smirk returned, but it didn't reach his eyes. "I know a lot of names, little mouse. The question is why my father's face is pressed against your mother's in a photograph taken before either of us existed."

"Let me see it again." Jerry's command cut through the room before I could answer. He held the locket up, tilting it toward the light, and I caught another glimpse of the image my mother's bright smile, Mr. Pillar's hand resting possessively at the small of her back. They looked happy. They looked like they belonged to each other.

The thought made my stomach turn. My mother had never mentioned a relationship with Alistair Pillar. Not once. She'd only ever spoken of the Pillar family with bitterness and grief, the kind of grief that came from being wronged by people who were supposed to protect you.

"I was a baby when my mother died," I said carefully, choosing each word with precision. "I never knew about this photograph until after she was gone. My grandmother gave it to me, along with the locket. She said it was the only picture my mother kept from her life before."

"Before what?" Jerry asked.

"Before she was forced to leave it behind."

The silence that followed was heavy with implication. Jefferson moved first, circling around to stand beside his brother, his arms crossed over his chest. Up close, the cut above his eyebrow looked fresh, still faintly red at the edges. He'd been in a fight recently, and from the way he carried himself the loose, coiled readiness in his shoulders he'd won.

"You're lying," he said flatly.

"No," I said, meeting his gaze. "I'm omitting. There's a difference."

Jerry's head lifted, and for the first time since the locket fell, I saw something flicker behind his dark eyes. Interest. Real, dangerous interest. He hadn't expected me to push back.

"Then start filling in the blanks," he said. "What was your mother's connection to our father?"

"I don't know."

"You expect us to believe that?"

"I expect you to believe what I can prove," I said, keeping my voice level despite the tremor building in my chest. "I have no idea what my mother was to your father. I only know what she told me before she died that the Pillar family took everything from her, and that I should never trust anyone with that name."

Jefferson laughed, low and humorless. "So you infiltrated our home, our family's private space, to what? Avenge her? Steal from us? Spy for someone else?"

"To find the truth," I said. "The same truth you're looking for right now."

Jerry set the locket down on the desk, but he didn't release it. His hand stayed curled around the chain, the silver links pooled in his palm like a leash. The gesture was deliberate, possessive. He wanted me to see that he could keep it keep the only piece of my mother I had left if he chose to.

"E.D.," he said slowly, testing the letters. "Eleanor Delaware. But that could also stand for something else."

"What else would it stand for?" I asked, though the question was a trap and we both knew it.

"I don't know yet." Jerry's gaze hadn't left my face. He was reading me the way I'd read the security rotations, picking apart every micro-expression, every hesitation. "But you know more than you're telling me. You're too calm."

I felt my pulse spike, but I forced my breathing to stay even. He was right. I was too calm. A real maid caught snooping in her employer's study would be weeping by now, begging for her job, her visa, her life. But I'd spent three years learning to bury my emotions beneath layers of composure ever since the night my grandmother died and left me with nothing but a locket, a name, and a burning need for answers.

"I'm calm because I've been expecting this conversation since the day I walked through your door," I said, which was true. I'd rehearsed dozens of scenarios, dozens of ways this confrontation could go. The only variable I hadn't accounted for was the twins' father staring back at me from my own locket.

Jefferson moved closer, and the air around me thickened with the scent of leather and smoke. He stopped just short of touching me, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from his body. His gaze dropped to my hands, which were still clutching the feather duster, knuckles white against the wooden handle.

"You're holding that thing like a weapon," he observed. "Planning to use it?"

"I'm planning to finish my shift and leave," I said. "Unless you're going to stop me."

The challenge hung between us, sharp-edged and reckless. Behind Jefferson, Jerry's expression didn't change, but I caught the subtle shift in his posture the way he leaned back against the desk, settling in to watch. He wanted to see what I would do. He wanted to see how far his brother would push.

The grandfather clock in the hall chimed twelve-fourteen. The security sweep would begin in one minute. If the guard found the study door locked from the inside, there would be questions. If he found two of the Pillar heirs inside with a maid, there would be a scandal.

But if I didn't use this moment to get more information, the entire night would be a waste.

I made a decision. A reckless one, but a decision nonetheless.

"I'll make you a deal," I said, squaring my shoulders. "You want the truth about your father and my mother. I want the locket back. Let me go now, before the security sweep finds us all here, and tomorrow I'll give you something better than a photograph. I'll give you a name."

Jerry's eyes narrowed. "What name?"

I hesitated for half a heartbeat, weighing the risk. I didn't have a name. Not yet. But I had a theory, a suspicion I'd been nursing for months: a theory that the blackmailer who'd driven my mother to her grave was still alive, still powerful, and still connected to the Pillar family. If I was right, the name would be worth more than gold. If I was wrong, I was about to gamble my life on a bluff.

"The name of the man who was blackmailing your father," I said. "The man who might have killed him."

The words landed like a grenade. Jefferson went rigid, every muscle in his body locking up. Jerry, by contrast, went utterly still a predator deciding whether to strike or retreat. For a long, suspended moment, neither of them spoke.

Then Jerry stood, pocketing the locket in one fluid motion. He walked toward me, and this time, there was nothing controlled about the way he looked at me. His gaze burned with something far more dangerous than suspicion.

"You have twenty-four hours," he said quietly. "If you're not back with that name by midnight tomorrow, I'll have every police officer, every private investigator, and every contact I have in this city hunting you down. And when they find you and they will I'll make sure the only thing your mother's legacy amounts to is a cautionary tale."

Jefferson stepped aside, his smirk returning. "I'll walk you out. Make sure you don't get lost on your way to the exit."

It wasn't a courtesy. It was a threat wrapped in pleasantry. But I didn't argue. I simply nodded, straightened my apron, and followed him out of the study, leaving Jerry alone with my mother's photograph and the weight of a secret that had just gotten infinitely heavier.

Jefferson didn't speak until we reached the service corridor, the narrow passage that connected the mansion's kitchens to the staff quarters. He stopped in the shadows, far from the prying eyes of the remaining party guests, and turned to face me.

"You're interesting," he said, the words almost accusatory. "Most people who lie to my brother end up in the hospital. You didn't even flinch."

"I'm not most people," I said.

"No," he agreed, his eyes trailing down the length of my uniform before snapping back to my face. "You're not. Which means I'm going to be watching you very, very closely."

He leaned in, close enough that I could see the flecks of gold in his dark irises, close enough that his breath ghosted across my cheek.

"Don't disappoint me, little mouse."

Then he was gone, melting back into the shadows of the corridor like he'd never been there at all.

I exhaled slowly, pressing a hand to my chest to steady myself. The locket was gone. Jerry had it. But I still had the truth, or part of it, and I still had twenty-four hours to figure out my next move.

What I didn't know was that Jerry wasn't alone in the study when I left. Jefferson had left the door slightly ajar, and through that narrow gap, Jerry had watched me go and then he'd opened the drawer I'd failed to pick, pulled out a file, and read the name at the top.

Eleanor Delaware.

Underneath it, in his father's handwriting, were three words that made no sense:

Trust no one.

But it was the photograph clipped to the file the one that made Jerry's blood run cold that sealed my fate. Because in that photograph, taken a decade after the locket, Eleanor Delaware was holding an infant wrapped in a pale yellow blanket.

And on the back of the photograph, in his father's handwriting, was a name.

Anne.

Jerry stared at the image, his mind racing through timelines that didn't add up. Anne was twenty-four. The photograph was dated fifteen years ago. The baby in the picture couldn't be Anne.

But the infant had the same dark hair. The same stubborn set to its jaw.

And when Jerry looked closer, he saw something that made his chest tighten with a feeling he couldn't name something between dread and a terrible, aching curiosity.

The baby in the photograph had his father's eyes