Chapter 7 - the Blackwood Continuity Program)
The encrypted file required a password.
Claire tried Daniel’s birthday.
Wrong.
Their wedding date.
Wrong.
Sophie’s birthday.
Wrong.
After five failed attempts, the system warned that two attempts remained.
Hayes stopped her.
“Don’t guess again.”
A digital forensics team was called.
While they worked, Vanessa paced.
“My father wasn’t my father.”
Claire remained quiet.
Vanessa laughed bitterly.
“Do you know how insane that sounds?”
“Daniel may have been wrong.”
“He wasn’t.”
Claire looked at her.
Vanessa wiped her eyes.
“My blood type.”
“What?”
“Dad was O negative. Mother is O positive.”
Claire understood.
Vanessa continued.
“I’m AB positive.”
Michael stared at her.
“You knew?”
“I knew the blood types didn’t make sense. Mother told me the hospital records were wrong.”
Claire thought of Margaret collapsing when Sophie mentioned seventeen.
“What is the Continuity Program?”
Vanessa shook her head.
“No idea.”
But Michael did.
At least partly.
“My firm handled a probate dispute involving an old Blackwood subsidiary two years ago.”
Everyone turned toward him.
“The company was called Continuity Holdings.”
Hayes asked, “What did it own?”
“Nothing.”
“Meaning?”
“On paper, nearly nothing. But it controlled voting rights across eleven family trusts.”
Vanessa stared.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know it mattered.”
Michael continued.
“The trusts had unusual succession clauses. Beneficiaries could be replaced if certain identity conditions were triggered.”
Claire frowned.
“Replaced?”
“Legally substituted.”
“With whom?”
“That part was sealed.”
The forensic analyst interrupted.
“We’re in.”
Claire approached the computer.
“How?”
“The encryption key was hidden in the metadata of the first video.”
“What was the password?”
The analyst looked at her.
“Sophie.”
Claire’s throat tightened.
The second video began.
Daniel sat in a different room.
No bruises.
He looked exhausted.
“Claire.”
Her eyes filled.
“I hope you never see this.”
She almost laughed through the tears.
Daniel continued.
“If you are watching, then Sophie has already been pulled into this.”
Claire squeezed her eyes shut.
“I’m sorry.”
His voice broke slightly.
“I tried to keep both of you away.”
He looked over his shoulder.
“The Continuity Program began with Nathaniel Blackwood in 1987. He believed the family fortune could survive scandals, divorces, hostile marriages, even incompetent heirs if legal identity could be controlled.”
Hayes leaned closer.
Daniel continued.
“They created private trusts linked not only to bloodlines but to designated replacements.”
Vanessa whispered, “Replacements.”
“Children raised under other names. Guardians paid. Birth records altered. Inheritance triggered only when required.”
Claire felt sick.
Daniel held up a paper.
“Room 17 contains original records.”
The red door from the photograph appeared on screen.
“Arthur wanted to destroy them.”
Vanessa cried silently.
“Margaret wanted control.”
Daniel’s expression hardened.
“Preston wanted access.”
Claire looked toward Vanessa.
Daniel continued.
“And there is one more person.”
The image glitched.
When it returned, the audio distorted.
The name vanished beneath static.
Daniel said, “If he is still alive, do not trust him.”
The screen froze.
Then displayed coordinates.
Upstate New York.
Briarwood.
The video resumed for five final seconds.
Daniel leaned close to the camera.
“Claire, there is something I never told you about the night Sophie was born.”
Claire’s heart stopped.
The video ended.
No continuation.
No explanation.
Nothing.
Sophie was born eight years ago.
Three years before Daniel recorded the message.
Claire stared at the black screen.
Hayes said softly, “What happened the night Sophie was born?”
Claire barely heard her.
“Nothing.”
“Think.”
Claire remembered labor.
Emergency surgery.
Daniel crying.
A nurse taking Sophie away for several hours because of breathing trouble.
Then Daniel refusing to leave the hospital for four days.
Claire had thought he was simply afraid.
But one memory returned.
Daniel arguing with a doctor in the hallway.
She had been sedated and barely conscious.
She remembered only one sentence.
May you like
Daniel saying:
That is not my daughter’s name.
