Chapter 6 - The Guardian’s Warning
Sophia grabbed the metal water pitcher from the bedside table and swung it toward the voice.
The pitcher struck someone’s shoulder.
A man cursed.
Emergency lights flickered on.
Sophia saw a figure dressed in hospital scrubs standing beside her bed.
His face was covered by a surgical mask.
He reached for the intravenous line.
Eleanor threw herself against him.
They crashed into the wall.
Sophia pressed the emergency button repeatedly.
The attacker shoved Eleanor to the floor and ran.
Maya entered with two security officers.
“He went toward the stairwell!”
One guard chased him.
The other remained with Sophia while nurses restored the monitors.
Julian groaned and lifted his head.
Blood ran from a cut above his eyebrow.
Eleanor sat against the wall, breathing heavily.
Sophia stared at her.
“You protected me.”
Eleanor touched her bruised shoulder.
“I protected the child.”
The answer should have angered Sophia.
Instead, she saw something else in Eleanor’s face.
Fear.
Dr. Chen examined Sophia again.
The baby’s heart rate remained strong.
Police searched the hospital but found only abandoned scrubs in a stairwell.
Security footage from the corridor had been erased during the power failure.
“This was planned,” Maya said.
Sophia looked at Eleanor.
“Tell us everything.”
Eleanor refused until the police left.
Then she closed the door.
“The Bennett Legacy Trust was created by Harold Bennett, Charles’s father. He believed the family’s survival depended on controlling every marriage and every birth.”
Julian sat in a chair with a bandage over his eyebrow.
“Grandfather was cruel, but he wasn’t supernatural. Someone is running the trust now.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“I have spent twenty years trying to discover that.”
Sophia narrowed her eyes.
“Why would you oppose it? You’ve spent my entire marriage defending this family.”
Eleanor looked down at her hands.
“Because the trust took my daughter.”
Julian became motionless.
“What daughter?”
Eleanor’s eyes filled with tears.
The sight was so unfamiliar that Sophia almost did not recognize her.
“Before Adrian was born, I gave birth to a girl.”
Julian shook his head.
“That’s impossible.”
“She lived for less than a day. Or that is what I was told.”
Sophia remembered Gabriel’s missing twin sister.
“Do you believe she was taken?”
“I know she was.”
“How?”
“Years later, I found a payment record from the hospital to the Legacy Trust. The same type of transfer appeared beside Elena Vale’s medical file.”
The pieces began forming.
Two newborn girls.
Two disappearances.
Both connected to the Bennett bloodline.
“What did the trust do with them?” Sophia asked.
“I don’t know.”
Maya leaned forward.
“Why take the girls and leave the boys?”
Eleanor’s expression tightened.
“Harold believed sons should inherit publicly. Daughters were more useful when raised without knowing their origins.”
“For what purpose?” Julian demanded.
“Influence. Marriage. Loyalty. A Bennett daughter could be placed inside another powerful family.”
Sophia felt sick.
“They trafficked children.”
“They called it preservation.”
Maya stood.
“We need federal authorities.”
Eleanor laughed bitterly.
“I contacted them years ago. The investigator assigned to my report disappeared.”
The room became silent.
Sophia’s phone vibrated.
Another anonymous message.
She opened it.
A photograph filled the screen.
It showed the hospital corridor outside her room.
The image had been taken minutes earlier.
Beneath it was a message.
The attacker was not sent by Gabriel.
Sophia typed:
Are you Gabriel?
The reply came instantly.
No.
She looked at Julian.
“There are two people messaging me.”
“Ask this one who they are.”
Sophia typed the question.
A new photograph appeared.
It showed a woman standing beside a lake, holding two infants wrapped in white blankets.
One baby wore a blue bracelet.
The other wore red.
On the back of the scanned photograph was a handwritten sentence.
For Charles, the son he will claim.
For the world, the daughter he must forget.
Eleanor moved closer.
“That’s Elena.”
Sophia studied the woman’s face.
She was beautiful, with dark hair and gentle eyes.
One of the babies had to be Gabriel.
The other was his sister.
A final message appeared.
The daughter did not die.
She was raised inside the Bennett household.
Everyone looked at Eleanor.
“That’s impossible,” she whispered.
Julian took the phone.
“Who was brought into the family twenty-nine years ago?”
Eleanor’s face changed.
Sophia saw the answer arrive before she spoke it.
“Vanessa.”
Maya frowned.
“Vanessa is Marcus Cross’s daughter.”
“No,” Eleanor said. “Marcus’s wife could not have children. They adopted a baby privately.”
Sophia remembered Vanessa’s age.
Twenty-nine.
Her dark eyes.
The way Charles always treated her with unusual tolerance.
Could Vanessa be Gabriel’s twin sister?
Julian shook his head.
“If Vanessa is Charles’s daughter, then Adrian has been sleeping with his half sister.”
Eleanor closed her eyes.
Sophia felt horror rise inside her.
But another thought followed.
“Does Vanessa know?”
“No,” Eleanor said. “She cannot.”
Sophia stared at the photograph.
Vanessa had paid the clinic.
Vanessa had helped Adrian plan to take her child.
But if she had been manipulated since birth, perhaps someone else had directed everything.
Maya pointed toward the anonymous number.
“Ask what the Guardian wants.”
Sophia typed.
The reply appeared.
The Guardian wants the same thing he has always wanted.
A perfect heir.
Another message followed.
Your child is not the target.
Sophia frowned.
Then who is?
May you like
The answer arrived.
You are.
