THE SERPENT'S HEIR

CHAPTER.THREE. CONTINUATION

The people at the museum knew me as Ariana Moore. The quiet archivist who kept to herself and never talked about her family.

Even my therapist didn't know my real last name. I'd lied on the intake forms. Paid cash so there was no insurance trail.

I'd been so careful. So paranoid about keeping my past buried. About making sure nobody could connect me to Thomas and Miranda Vale and the night they disappeared.

But someone knew. Someone had found me. Someone knew exactly who I was.

I picked up the card again with shaking hands and read the message over and over like the words might change if I stared long enough.

The Valtieri Estate. Friday at eight PM.

Three days from now.

If I wanted to know the truth about my parents.

The truth. After twelve years of questions and nightmares and half-remembered fragments that nobody believed.

After twelve years of therapists telling me I'd imagined the ritual. That trauma had created false memories. That my parents had died in a tragic accident and my brain had invented a more dramatic story to process the grief.

After twelve years of wondering if they were right. If I was crazy. If what I remembered was real or just the delusions of a traumatized child.

Someone was offering me the truth.

I should throw the card away. Should pretend this never happened. Should go back to my safe quiet life where the past stayed buried.

But my hands wouldn't let go of the card.

My eyes kept reading those words. The truth about Thomas and Miranda Vale.

What if they weren't dead? What if they'd survived that night somehow? What if they'd been alive all this time and never came looking for me?

The thought made me sick and hopeful at the same time. Sick because what kind of parents abandoned their twelve-year-old daughter? Hopeful because maybe I could finally get answers. Finally understand what I'd witnessed. Finally know if I was crazy or if everything I remembered was real.

I walked back to my desk on shaky legs. Set the card down. I opened my laptop.

Searched for Valtieri Estate.

The results loaded immediately. Dozens of articles and photos.

The Valtieri Estate was a massive property in the Hudson Valley.

And the owner was someone named Lucien Valtieri.

I clicked on his name. More articles appeared, photos of a man who looked like he belonged on a magazine cover instead of in real life.

Billionaire, CEO of Valtieri Industries. One of the richest men in the country. The media called him ruthless, brilliant. Dangerous in the way powerful men often were.

There were society photos of him at charity galas. Business articles about his companies.

Nothing about cults, nothing about serpent symbols, nothing that connected him to what I'd seen twelve years ago.

Just a rich powerful man who lived in a mansion and ran an empire.

Why would someone like that know about my parents? Why would he send me this invitation?