CHAPTER 10 — RICHARD’S DAUGHTER
The bullet passed through Mr. Whitaker’s shoulder.
He survived surgery.
His confession afterward changed everything.
Richard had met Laura when she was nineteen.
He pursued her obsessively.
When she attempted to end the relationship, he became violent.
Months later, Laura discovered she was pregnant.
Richard believed the baby was his.
Laura refused to let him near me.
Thomas Carter, Margaret’s husband at the time, agreed to raise me as his own.
The original birth certificate had been altered to protect me.
“So Richard is my father?” I asked.
Mr. Whitaker stared at the hospital blanket.
“Biologically, yes.”
Vanessa was sitting beside the window.
That made us more than stepsisters.
We shared a father.
Richard had spent years watching me because I was not merely a threat to his secrets.
I was his daughter.
“Why did he hate me?” I asked.
“He did not hate you,” Mr. Whitaker said. “He believed you belonged to him.”
That was worse.
Detective Hale identified the cottage shooter through a traffic camera.
It was the funeral director.
He had been released temporarily after agreeing to cooperate.
Richard had paid him to kill Whitaker before the attorney could reveal the truth.
Police arrested him at a marina.
In exchange for leniency, he gave Hale the location of a storage unit rented under Richard’s shell company.
Inside were passports, cash, false identities, and surveillance photographs.
One photograph showed Margaret entering a private airfield four days earlier.
Another showed her boarding a small plane.
The aircraft was registered to Vale Maritime Holdings.
Flight records listed its destination as Cumberland Island.
A remote estate owned by the company stood there.
Richard had been transferred to a secure medical ward after claiming chest pain.
When Hale arrived to question him, Richard’s bed was empty.
A nurse had found an identification badge and uniform missing from a supply room.
Security footage showed Richard leaving disguised as an orderly.
He was heading for Cumberland Island.
We boarded a police boat before dawn.
Vanessa insisted on coming.
“So did Laura.”
The estate appeared through the morning fog, a sprawling white mansion surrounded by marshland.
Its dock was empty.
The front doors stood open.
Inside, the house looked abandoned.
Then music drifted from the ballroom.
My mother’s favorite song.
We followed it.
A woman sat at the grand piano with her back to us.
“Mom?” Vanessa whispered.
The woman stopped playing.
She turned.
It was Margaret.
Alive.
Older.
Frightened.
But alive.
I took one step toward her.
May you like
Then Richard emerged behind me and pressed a gun against my spine.
“Now,” he said softly, “my entire family is finally together.”
