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The first time Arthur Menezes really heard the cleaning lady speak, her words stopped him in his tracks.
“Sir… this boy lived with me at the orphanage until he was fourteen.”
Her voice, soft and shaky, floated through the quiet hallway of his mansion. Arthur stood before a large portrait that had hung on his wall for years, more decoration than memory.
But today, it spoke.
The child in the painting stared back at him with familiar eyes. The same calm gaze. The same dark hair. The same open, trusting expression Arthur remembered from childhood. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe.
The boy in the portrait looked exactly like his younger brother.
The brother who had disappeared more than thirty years ago.
Beside him, the cleaning lady—Clara—clasped her hands together to steady them.
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