CHAPTER 6 — THE MAN EVERYONE BLAMED WASN'T THE MONSTER
Richard Lancaster didn't move.
His cane slipped from his hand and struck the marble floor with a sharp crack.
"No..."
he whispered.
"She survived..."
Special Investigator Rebecca Hayes narrowed her eyes.
"You know exactly who we're talking about."
Richard looked twenty years older.
"I thought Eleanor died after the accident."
Victor's head snapped upward.
"What?"
Rebecca slowly opened a thick case file.
"She didn't."
"The former maternity supervisor, Eleanor Brooks."
"The nurse who disappeared with Emily Lancaster."
"She has been living under another identity in Oregon for twenty-three years."
Emily frowned.
"Why would she disappear?"
Rebecca answered carefully.
"Because someone tried to kill her."
The ballroom erupted again.
Victor shook his head.
"No."
"I never touched her."
Rebecca looked directly at him.
"We know."
The room fell silent.
"You didn't order the attack."
Victor blinked.
"What?"
Rebecca continued.
"Eleanor has spent twenty-three years believing the person who hired the men to silence her..."
She paused.
"...was Richard Lancaster."
Richard looked horrified.
"I've never even met those men."
Rebecca nodded.
"That's exactly what she told us yesterday."
Emily stared between them.
"Then who?"
Rebecca slowly removed an old cassette recorder from an evidence bag.
"This was hidden inside Eleanor's attic."
"It contains a conversation recorded the night Emily disappeared."
She handed it to the ballroom technician.
Static filled the speakers.
Then a woman's frightened voice echoed through the ballroom.
"Victor doesn't know."
Another voice answered.
A deep male voice.
"Good."
"He must never know."
Chloe frowned.
"That's not Dad."
Richard shook his head.
"No."
The mysterious man continued.
"If Isabella discovers who Emily's real father is..."
"...everything we've built dies tonight."
The ballroom exploded into stunned silence.
Emily slowly looked at her mother.
"What..."
"...does that mean?"
Her mother covered her mouth.
Tears streamed down her cheeks.
She whispered,
"I never wanted you to find out like this."
Chloe's breathing became ragged.
"What is he talking about?"
Their mother looked at both daughters.
Then at Victor.
"I loved Victor."
She swallowed painfully.
"But..."
"Emily..."
She couldn't finish.
Emily's voice shook.
"I'm... not his daughter?"
The mother nodded through tears.
"No."
"You and Chloe are sisters..."
"But not identical twins."
The room froze.
"You were born only four months apart."
Every guest stared in disbelief.
She continued,
"Before I married Victor..."
"I had another baby."
"I was told she died during delivery."
She looked at Emily.
"You."
Emily's legs gave out.
She collapsed into a chair.
The mother sobbed.
"Victor knew the truth."
"He adopted you as his own because he loved me."
"But someone else..."
"...wanted to erase every trace that you had ever existed."
Rebecca slowly closed the case file.
"We finally identified that man this morning."
The ballroom doors opened once more.
Two federal agents escorted in an elegant eighty-year-old man wearing an expensive charcoal suit.
Richard Lancaster's older brother.
The forgotten founder of the Lancaster empire.
The man everyone believed had retired overseas twenty-five years earlier.
Richard whispered in horror,
"...William."
William Lancaster smiled calmly at the room.
Then he looked directly at Emily.
"I've waited twenty-three years..."
May you like
"...to make sure you never found your way home."
END OF CHAPTER 6
