She stared into the depths of her wine glass, the third of the evening, its burgundy reflection warping her reflection like a funhouse mirror.
The art gallery's cancellation email still glowed on her phone screen—unforeseen logistical issues—but she knew the real reason.
A rival curator's niece had elbowed her out, and the world had yawned, uninterested in Francesca Hart's "quaint watercolors" when a buzzworthy street artist's exhibit loomed.
Her phone vibrated on the marble counter.
Siri's text popped up: Elena's at the mansion.
Just got a tip from the gate guard—she's been kneeling in the snow for hours.
You should see this.
Francesca's fingers tightened around her stemware.
The name scraped like sandpaper across her nerves.
Elena Frost, the star surgeon at Hart Plastic, the woman who'd stolen every accolade Francesca had ever coveted by sheer, infuriating competence.
But more than that—there'd been whispers lately.
Rumors about birth certificates, a nursery fire thirty years ago, a baby girl lost.
She set the glass down too hard; red wine sloshed onto her cashmere sleeve.
"Idiot," she muttered, swiping at the stain.
But her feet were already moving, carrying her toward the elevator.
The mansion's main wing was a ten-minute walk across the estate, but tonight, the snow crunched like broken glass under her boots, each step a puncture.
The east wing windows glowed amber when she rounded the fountain.
Through the frost-fogged panes, she saw him first—Uncle Henry, his silver hair stark against the black coat he'd forgotten to shed, bending over a figure on the foyer bench.
Francesca's breath hitched.
The girl was half-collapsed, her dark hair matted with snow, cheeks blue-tinged.
But when Henry tilted her face up to check her pulse, Francesca's stomach dropped.
High cheekbones, a Cupid's bow mouth—features she'd studied in old family portraits.
The ones locked in the vault: her father's sister, Eleanor, who'd died in that fire.
"No," Francesca whispered.
Her hand flew to her necklace, the diamond pendant her parents had given her on her eighteenth birthday, their only daughter.
But the girl's lips were moving, a frail, repetitive murmur.
"Mom… mom…"
Henry's hand stilled.
His jaw slackened, a crack in the granite he'd worn since Francesca was a child.
He'd never spoken of his sister—Eleanor's death had been the family's forbidden song.
But now, his thumb brushed the girl's frozen cheek, and Francesca saw it: the tears.
"Get the fireplace going," he barked at a maid, his voice hoarse.
"Hot water, blankets. Now."
Francesca ducked behind the hedge, her heart thundering.
This couldn't be real.
A stranger, claiming… what?
That she was the lost Hart heir?
That Francesca, raised with tutors and debutante balls, was nothing but a placeholder?
The front door slammed.
Her father, Richard, strode in, his tailored overcoat flapping.
"Henry, what the hell is this?"
Henry didn't turn.
He was stripping off the girl's soaked gloves, chafing her fingers between his own.
"She's Eleanor's daughter."
Richard's laugh was sharp, brittle.
"You've lost your mind. Eleanor's daughter died in that fire. We buried her."
"Did we?" Henry stood, finally, his gaze blazing.
"Or did we bury a charred crib? The nurse swore she saw a shadow leaving the nursery that night. A woman—Eleanor's maid, Maria. She vanished the same day. What if she took the baby?" He gestured to the girl, now shivering under a blanket.
"Look at her, Richard. The eyes—exactly like Eleanor's. And she called me 'uncle' when I lifted her. Not 'sir.' Not 'mister.' Uncle."
Francesca pressed a hand to her mouth.
The wine had curdled in her stomach.
This wasn't just a random drifter.
This was a threat.
To her inheritance, her place in the family, the life she'd built on the assumption that she was the Hart daughter.
The girl moaned, her head lolling.
Henry's voice softened.
"She's burning up. Pneumonia, maybe. We can't just—"
"We can," Richard snapped.
"And we will. You think the board won't crucify us if word gets out we're harboring some vagrant claiming to be family? Francesca's entire future—"
"Francesca isn't the issue here," Henry said, low.
"Eleanor is. Our sister. We owed her better than a closed casket and a lie."
Richard's face turned red.
"You want to risk everything on a hunch? On a girl who shows up in a snowstorm like a bad novel?"
Francesca backed away, her boots sinking into the snow.
She fumbled for her phone, hands shaking, and lifted it.
The flash was off, but the camera caught the girl's face—a ghostly echo of the portraits.
She meant to save it, to have proof of this madness, but her thumb slipped.
The photo pinged to her recent messages, and her blood turned to ice.
The last text thread she'd opened: Lucas.
Her cousin, away at that brutal military academy, the one person who'd always seen through her.
The one person who'd once held her hair back when she cried over a failed art class, who'd said, You're better than this, Frankie.
She dropped the phone.
It hit the snow with a soft thud, but the damage was done.
Inside, the argument rose to a crescendo.
Francesca didn't stay to hear the end.
She fled back to the penthouse, her breath coming in ragged gasps, and locked herself in the bathroom.
The mirror showed a stranger: eyes wide, lips parted, the ghost of a girl in the snow haunting her reflection.
Downstairs, in the guest room, Elena's fever spiked.
She thrashed under the blankets, her lips moving in delirium.
"Lucas…," she whispered, before her voice dissolved into a cough.
Somewhere, a phone buzzed.
In a dim barracks halfway across the country, Lucas Hart stared at the screen, the photo blurry but unmistakable.
His chest tightened, a storm gathering where there'd only been emptiness since Elena walked out of his life.
He typed a reply, his fingers slow, deliberate.
Who is she?
But the question hung, unanswered, as the snow outside the Hart mansion thickened, blanketing the world in white.
And in the guest room, Elena's eyes fluttered open—for a moment, clear, aware—before she slipped back into darkness.

Chapter 4 Midnight in the Snow, The Secret of the Transcript
The guest room was a cave of shadows when Elena's eyes fluttered open