Chapter 4: The Locked Room
I left the hospital against medical advice the following afternoon.
Thomas protested until he realized I would return to Vance Manor with or without him. Mrs. Alvarez arranged for a nurse to accompany us and promised that I would remain seated whenever possible.
The police had placed yellow tape across the entrance hall, but Eleanor was nowhere to be found.
Captain Mercer had filed a report describing my fall as an accident.
Every staff member who contradicted him had been ordered not to leave the county.
Eleanor had not been arrested.
She had not even been questioned.
Thomas led us through the east wing, a section of the mansion that had remained closed for as long as I had known the family.
Dust covered the furniture. Heavy curtains blocked the afternoon light.
At the end of the corridor stood a pale blue door.
“The blue nursery,” Thomas said.
He removed an old brass key from his pocket.
“Why do you have that?”
“Your father-in-law gave it to me before he died.”
Nathan’s father, Charles Vance, had supposedly suffered a heart attack eight years earlier.
Thomas turned the key.
The room smelled of cedar, dust, and something faintly medicinal.
A crib stood beneath the window. Blue wallpaper peeled from the walls. Children’s books remained lined neatly along a shelf.
Above the fireplace hung a portrait of a young woman holding a baby.
The child looked exactly like Nathan.
But the woman was not Eleanor.
“Who is she?” I asked.
Thomas closed the door behind us.
“Her name was Rebecca Hale.”
He explained that Rebecca had worked at the estate nearly thirty years ago. According to Eleanor, Rebecca had stolen jewelry and disappeared.
But Thomas knew the truth.
Rebecca had been Charles Vance’s first wife.
And Nathan was her son.
Eleanor had married Charles after Rebecca vanished. She had raised Nathan as her own and erased every record of his real mother.
My stomach tightened.
“Why would Nathan’s real mother matter now?”
Thomas walked toward the crib and lifted the mattress.
Hidden beneath it was a sealed envelope bearing Charles Vance’s handwriting.
Inside, we found a copy of a will.
Charles had left controlling ownership of Vance Industries to Nathan.
But if Nathan died before having a child, control would pass to Eleanor.
If Nathan had a living heir, Eleanor would receive nothing.
My baby was not simply her grandchild.
My baby was the one person standing between Eleanor and a billion-dollar empire.
A floorboard creaked in the corridor.
May you like
Thomas turned toward the door.
The handle began to move.
