Chapter 8 - The Mirror ImageThe word hung in the damp, echoing silence of the tunnel like a lingering curse.
Twins.
“That’s impossible,” I stammered, shaking my head. “I’m thirty-two years old! Sophie is nine! We are mother and daughter, not twins!”
“I know,” Richard said, his voice heavy with grief. “Caroline gave birth to twin girls in that Vermont clinic. But in the chaos of the night Margaret fled with the newborns, and the manhunt that followed... they were separated.”
My heart hammered against my ribs. “Separated? By who?”
“My father’s men caught up to Margaret at the train station three days later,” Richard said, staring straight ahead into the darkness. “They searched her bags. They found one infant—you, Hannah. Margaret managed to hide the second twin inside a laundry basket entrusted to a local parish priest who didn't know who she was.”
“My God,” I whispered, covering my mouth with my trembling hand.
“My father took you, Hannah, thinking you were the only child, and handed you over to a trusted, childless family friend—Margaret—with a strict instruction: Raise her far away, keep her anonymous, and never speak of the Vale name again. He paid her a monthly retainer to ensure eternal silence.”
“That’s a lie!” I screamed, tears finally breaking free. “My mother raised me with love! She worked every single day of her life! She didn't take blood money!”
“She took it because it was the only way to keep you safe from my father’s surveillance,” Richard said gently. “Every cent was deposited into an account she never touched, waiting for the day she could safely pass it to you. But what about the second twin? The sister who was left behind at the parish?”
Sophie leaned forward from the backseat, her unique eyes wide with innocent curiosity. “What happened to her?”
Richard turned fully in his seat, looking directly at Sophie, and then at me.
“She grew up in foster care, unaware of her true identity. She married young, had a child of her own... and passed away four years ago in a tragic accident.”
A cold dread pooled in my stomach. “Who?”
Richard swallowed hard. “Your mother, Hannah. The woman you called Mom for twenty-eight years... wasn't Margaret. Margaret was your grandmother. The woman who raised you—the woman who loved you, who worked her fingers to the bone, who died two years ago—was your twin sister’s adoptive mother.”
The world spun violently off its axis. Every memory I had of my mother—her face, her hands, her voice—suddenly shifted in my mind like pieces of a broken mirror falling into a terrifying new pattern.
“No,” I whispered, clutching my head. “No, that’s insane. That doesn't make any sense.”
“It makes total sense,” a cold, metallic voice echoed from the darkness outside the car door.
We all whipped our heads toward the window.
May you like
Standing in the headlights of a second, unmarked SUV that had silently blocked our exit was Julian Vance. And in his hand, resting calmly against his thigh, was a suppressed pistol.
Julian has tracked us down into the deep tunnels. And he knows the ultimate secret of the bloodline. But he isn't here to negotiate—he’s here to finish what the old man started.
