CHAPTER 4 — The Woman in the Hospital Hall
Detective Bennett fired twice at the lock.
The bullets barely marked the steel.
Smoke thickened around them.
Emily covered her mouth as pain tightened across her abdomen.
Elena searched the nursery walls.
“These old houses always had secondary exits.”
“There’s nothing here,” an officer said.
Elena looked at the crib.
The legs had been bolted to the floor.
She and Bennett shoved it aside.
Beneath it was a narrow trapdoor.
They descended into a stone tunnel moments before flames entered the nursery.
The tunnel opened behind the mansion’s greenhouse.
Emily collapsed in the rain.
At the hospital, doctors confirmed that she and the baby were stable. Stress had caused contractions, but she was not in labor.
Elena remained outside Emily’s room.
She did not feel like a sister.
Not yet.
She still wore the gray maid’s uniform and carried years of secrets Emily had only begun to understand.
Near midnight, Emily opened her eyes and saw Elena sitting beside the window.
“Why did you save me?” Emily asked.
Elena looked confused.
“You didn’t know whether I would accept you. You could have let the chandelier fall.”
Elena’s jaw tightened.
“I spent my entire life wondering whether I had a family. I wasn’t going to watch that family die in front of me.”
Emily reached out.
After a moment, Elena took her hand.
Their fingers were nearly identical.
A nurse entered carrying a syringe.
“Something to help you sleep,” she said.
Emily noticed Elena’s expression change.
“What medication?” Elena asked.
The nurse hesitated.
“It’s in her chart.”
“Which medication?”
The woman moved quickly.
She drove the syringe toward Emily’s IV line.
Elena seized her wrist.
The syringe fell.
The nurse pulled a small blade from her pocket and slashed Elena’s arm before running into the hallway.
Hospital security chased her toward the elevators.
Detective Bennett arrived minutes later.
The syringe contained enough potassium chloride to stop Emily’s heart.
The nurse was not a hospital employee.
She had entered using stolen identification.
Security cameras showed her meeting a man in the parking garage.
The image was unclear, but his posture and expensive overcoat were unmistakable.
Victor.
Emily stared at the frozen image.
“He’s still here.”
Bennett nodded.
“And he has help.”
A doctor entered carrying the results of Elena and Emily’s emergency DNA test.
The chance that they were biological sisters was greater than 99 percent.
But the report contained another finding.
Elena was not merely Emily’s sister.
According to the genetic markers, Elena was the firstborn twin.
Under the Whitmore trust, she held controlling authority over the entire family estate.
Before anyone could react, Elena’s phone rang.
An unknown voice whispered through the speaker.
“Give Victor control of the trust, or Harold Grant dies before morning.”
Then the caller sent them a photograph.
May you like
The missing attorney was alive.
And he was chained inside Emily’s childhood home.
