Chapter 4 - THE PHOTOGRAPH AND THE GHOST
Miles reached into his pocket with a swift, fluid motion and pulled out his personal phone. His thumbs moved rapidly across the screen, accessing a heavily encrypted private cloud folder that had remained locked for nearly a decade.
He turned the phone screen toward Sophie.
Displayed on the high-definition screen was a worn, digitized photograph taken ten years prior in front of a private airstrip. In the picture stood a younger Miles in a dark suit, his arm thrown over the shoulder of a second man—a tall, muscular figure with dark wavy hair, sharp features, and an identical posture. The resemblance was unmistakable; they were brothers, almost identical in stature and demeanor.
Sophie leaned forward, her eyes scanning the face of the second man in the photo.
Her breath caught sharply in her throat. Her knees buckled slightly, her hand clutching Ruby’s pink dress for balance.
"That’s him," Sophie gasped, her face turning a sickly shade of white. "That’s my husband... that’s Alexander Bennett."
Miles slowly lowered the phone, his expression shifting from disbelief to an icy, calculation-driven fury. He stared at her, then back at the photograph on his screen.
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"My brother died eight years ago," Miles said, his voice dropping an octave. "I identified his body after the boat explosion in Capri. We buried him in the family vault."
Ruby squeezed her stuffed rabbit tightly against her chest, sensing the suffocating terror in her mother's body, her eyes wide as she looked between her mother and the powerful man standing over them.
