Chapter 2 - The Ghost in the EstateThe silence that followed was so thick I could hear the rhythmic ticking of the lobby’s grand clock.
“That’s impossible,” I snapped, shaking my head violently. “My mother raised me alone in a cramped apartment. We scraped by on her pension. I know who my parents were—my father was a contractor who died when I was three!”
“Your birth certificate lists a father who never existed, Hannah,” Richard said smoothly, stepping closer despite my defensive posture. “My family’s legal team can bury—or unearth—anything. When I saw those records three years ago, I started looking for you. But you had moved, changed your phone number, covered your tracks so well it was like you didn't exist.”
“Because we’re ordinary people trying to live quiet lives!” I hissed, pulling Sophie closer behind my legs. “You’re Richard Vale. You own half this state. If you’ve been looking for us, why show up now, by pure coincidence, in a hospital your foundation funded?”
A faint, bitter smile touched the corner of Richard’s mouth.
“It wasn't a coincidence,” he said softly.
My breath caught. “What do you mean?”
“I didn't fund this pediatric wing to cure diseases, Hannah,” Richard confessed, his eyes scanning the gleaming bronze plaque on the wall bearing his family's name. “I funded it because this hospital network shares a database with every regional birth registry in the country. My private algorithm has been scanning for the genetic marker—the dual-colored amber and blue-gray irises—for five years. An alert pinged on my phone twenty minutes ago when your daughter was registered at the front desk for her asthma check-up.”
Horror washed over me. I had walked straight into a trap—a trap that had been waiting for us for years.
“You stalked us,” I whispered.
“I protected my blood,” Richard corrected, his tone turning ice-cold. “And now, someone else knows you're here.”
Before I could ask what he meant, a sharp, metallic crash echoed from the service corridor behind the reception desk. A man in a dark gray suit, holding a shattered clipboard, stepped out of the shadows.
May you like
It was Julian Vance, Richard’s chief legal counsel and the managing director of Vale Holdings. And he was staring straight at Sophie with a look of pure, unadulterated terror.
The trap has sprung, but Richard isn't the only predator hunting for Sophie. What does Julian Vance know about the night Caroline disappeared?
