Chapter 2 - THE CHILD THEY CALLED A TRESPASSER.
Victoria Ashford arrived with two private guards and stared at Lucy as if the child had stained the carpet.
“What is she doing inside the family library?”
Lucy held Daniel’s wrist.
“I helped him wake up.”
Victoria ignored her.
She told the guards Lucy was the groundskeeper’s daughter and had no permission to enter the main house.
Daniel forced himself upright.
“She saved me.”
Victoria’s expression remained cold.
“Children from staff housing learn quickly when valuables are nearby.”
Lucy’s eyes filled with tears.
Daniel’s voice sharpened.
“She brought medicine. She took nothing.”
Victoria looked at the rabbit backpack.
“That bag leaves with security.”
Lucy pulled it closer.
“My dad said never give it to anyone wearing the Ashford crest.”
The room fell silent.
Lucy’s father, Thomas Bennett, had worked as the mansion’s head electrician before disappearing six months earlier.
The family told employees he stole company documents and fled.
Lucy never believed them.
Daniel asked Victoria what was inside his wine.
She replied, “You drank too much and frightened a child.”
Then one guard found a silver earring beneath the desk.
Daniel recognized it.
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It belonged to his wife, Celeste—the woman in the silver dress.
But Celeste had been declared dead two years earlier.
