CHAPTER 7 – The List of the Living Dead
Emily couldn't sleep.
The list lay on the hospital table beside her, its yellowed pages stained by decades of secrets.
Three names.
Three stolen lives.
One had already been uncovered.
The second belonged to Sarah's little girl.
But the third name...
Made Emily's hands tremble.
Ethan Brooks.
She looked up in disbelief.
"No..."
It couldn't be.
The man she'd almost married...
The man she'd accused of betrayal...
Was another stolen child.
When Ethan arrived at the hospital the next morning, Emily silently handed him the document.
He laughed nervously.
"This has to be fake."
Then his smile disappeared.
Because beneath his name was a hospital identification number—the same number tattooed inside an old bracelet his adoptive parents had always told him never to remove.
For the first time in his life...
Ethan realized he didn't know who he really was.
Just then, Detective Mason rushed into the room.
"We found the nurse."
Emily stood instantly.
"The nurse who switched the babies?"
He nodded.
"She's dying."
Within minutes, they reached a small hospice on the edge of town.
The elderly woman could barely breathe.
When she saw Emily, tears streamed down her wrinkled face.
"I've waited... twenty-five years..."
Emily knelt beside her bed.
"Tell me everything."
The nurse whispered through broken breaths.
"I didn't choose the babies..."
"There was someone giving orders."
Emily leaned closer.
"Who?"
The old woman slowly raised a shaking finger toward the television in the corner of the room.
A live press conference was playing.
Reporters surrounded a smiling billionaire woman announcing a massive children's charity.
The nurse whispered one final sentence.
"She's the one who bought your life."
Then the heart monitor went flat.
Emily turned toward the television.
The billionaire smiled warmly for the cameras...
The very same smile Emily had seen every Christmas dinner growing up.
Because the woman on the screen...
May you like
Wasn't just her adoptive mother.
She was about to become the next Governor.
