Her 20-Year Silence Ended When Her Daughter Came Back for Revenge novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Hands

I took the microphone off its stand before anyone on the stage understood what I was doing.

"Good evening," I said, and my voice came out of the speakers over three hundred heads.

Lavinia turned, still smiling, and the smile stayed.

"Dear, you're in the wrong place," she said gently. "Someone fetch her down."

"Mrs. Mercer told you all, at the gala, that she carried a man out of a fire with these hands."

I pointed at her white gloves.

"Take them off, Mrs. Mercer."

The room was very quiet.

"This is absurd," Lavinia said. "This is the girl who stole my ring."

"Take them off."

"Security."

"Let her speak, Lavinia."

Gareth had walked up the steps beside the stage.

He stood next to me in his dark suit, in front of the mayor and the cameras, and he took the microphone from my hand and held it.

"My name is Gareth Wincott," he said. "Twenty-two years ago, I was carried out of Marlowe Hall by a woman I never saw. I have thanked the wrong person every year since."

Three hundred people stirred and did not speak.

"Adela Lorrimer didn't run from our wedding. She pulled me out of the fire, and someone took her coat off her while she lay on the grass." He turned his head and looked at Lavinia. "This girl is our daughter. I was told Adela had abandoned me. I believed it, because it was easy."

Lavinia's face did not change.

"He's overcome," she told the room. "He is grieving. We have all seen the forger's story."

"There is no forger," I said. "There is a woman."

The service doors at the back of the ballroom opened.

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