Chapter 8 - The Ghost of St. Jude’sThe heavy oak door of the estate's lower-level security archive slammed open as Antoine strode inside, his boots echoing sharply against the concrete floor. Donovan and I hurried closely behind him, our breath pluming in the artificially chilled air of the server room.
On the main monitor, cascading lines of green decrypted code scrolled past at blinding speed.
"The transmission wasn't just an alert," Donovan said, tapping rapidly on the console. "It was a backup synchronization file. It contained the complete medical history of the triplets... and a high-resolution scan of Dela’s original hospital admittance registry."
Antoine stared at the screen, his jaw clenching so hard a muscle twitched in his cheek. "Where is Mrs. Gable?"
"She vanished ten minutes ago during the shift change," Donovan replied grimly. "Her private quarters are empty. But she left something behind on her desk."
Donovan handed Antoine a heavy, wax-sealed manila envelope bearing no return address—only a handwritten label addressed directly to Antoine Maro.
Antoine broke the seal with his thumb, pulling out a single sheet of heavy parchment and a polaroid photograph.
The moment Antoine’s eyes hit the photograph, the color drained completely from his face.
I stepped forward, peering over his shoulder. The image showed a hospital bassinet from St. Jude’s perinatal unit. In it lay three newborn babies wrapped in blue blankets. But standing beside the bassinet, wearing a nurse’s uniform with her face half-shadowed by overhead fluorescent lights, was a woman who didn't look like Mrs. Gable—and didn't look like me.
It was a woman with striking, familiar amber eyes.
"Who is that?" I whispered, a cold shiver running down my spine.
Antoine’s hands shook—just slightly—as he lowered the photograph.
"Elena," Antoine breathed, his voice hollow, as if a ghost had just walked through the room. "My first wife’s younger sister."
The silence in the server room became absolute.
"I thought she died in a Swiss clinic five years ago," Antoine continued, his voice dropping into a dangerous, gravelly whisper. "The family told me she overdosed. They held a funeral."
"She didn't die, Boss," Donovan said grimly, reading from a secondary terminal file that had just unlocked. "She faked her death to escape an arranged marriage within the syndicate. And when my late wife—her own sister—became pregnant with your heirs using a surrogate... Elena saw an opportunity to seize the Maro fortune from the inside."
The puzzle pieces violently clicked together, forming a picture far more terrifying than we could have ever imagined. Julian hadn't acted alone. He had been a puppet in a much larger, bloodier game orchestrated by a woman everyone believed was dead.
And the note inside the envelope?
May you like
Antoine slowly unfolded the parchment. Written in elegant, sweeping cursive were just two sentences:
“You thought you won, Antoine. But the real heir isn't in your nursery... and the game has only just begun.”
