I nodded. “That’s what I thought.”
He exhaled, controlled. “There are similar pieces.”
“There aren’t,” I said.
His gaze narrowed. “How do you know?”
Because I opened it.
Because I felt the hinge.
Because I would know that interior engraving in the dark.
But I didn’t need to explain myself to a man whose first instinct had been to hang up on me.
“I can go to the police,” I said, letting the words fall on the table like a heavy object. “Or you can tell me where you got it.”
That did something to him.
Richard’s eyes flicked to the door, then back to me. His throat bobbed once.
He let out a slow breath, the kind that comes before a man finally stops pretending.
“I didn’t steal anything,” he said quietly.
I didn’t blink. “Then tell me.”
He stared down at the photos again as if my mother’s face had power over him.
Then he spoke.
“Twenty-five years ago,” Richard said, “a business partner brought it to me.”
My stomach tightened.
He continued, “He said it had been in his family for generations. He said it was known to bring extraordinary luck to whoever carried it.”
I sat very still, my hands folded in my lap to keep them from shaking.
Richard swallowed. “My wife and I had been trying to have a child for years. Years. Doctors, tests, treatments… all of it. Nothing worked.”
His voice cracked slightly on the last word, then he stiffened, like he hated allowing emotion into his narrative.
“He said it could help,” Richard continued. “I didn’t… I didn’t normally believe in that kind of thing. But desperation makes you stupid.”
I didn’t interrupt.
“I paid him twenty-five thousand dollars,” Richard said, eyes fixed on the table. “Cash. No paperwork.”
Of course there was no paperwork. That would’ve made the truth too traceable.
“And Claire?” I asked, my voice low.
Richard’s jaw clenched. “Claire was born eleven months later.”
The words sat in the air like smoke.
He looked up at me then, eyes hard. “I never questioned it after that. Not once.”
I held his gaze. “Because it worked.”
He didn’t answer, but the silence was enough.
“Name,” I said.
Richard’s brow furrowed. “What?”
“The man who sold it,” I said. “I want his name.”
Richard hesitated again. Then he said, “Dan.”
The room tilted.
Not because the name was shocking on its own.
Because it was a name I knew so well it lived in my bones.
Dan.
My brother.
I stared at Richard, waiting for him to correct himself, to laugh, to say he meant Don or Darren or something else.
He didn’t.
“Dan,” he repeated, quieter now, as if he sensed he’d struck something deep.
My throat went dry. “Dan who?”
Richard’s eyes narrowed. “I never knew his last name. He was a partner in a small investment venture for a few years. It didn’t last.”
My pulse was roaring in my ears.
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