Chapter 8 - The Woman Behind the Walls
Mrs. Bell moved first.
She pushed Clara through a narrow opening and closed the panel behind them just as the guard’s light swept across the passage.
They crawled through darkness until Clara’s knees struck stone steps.
“Quietly,” Mrs. Bell whispered.
They descended into a lower tunnel.
At the bottom stood a locked iron door.
Mrs. Bell removed a key from her apron.
“What is this place?”
“The Calders built these passages during the border wars. Damian’s grandfather later used them to hide financial records.”
The door opened into a cellar filled with shelves.
Not wine.
Files.
Thousands of folders occupied the room, labeled with dates, names, companies, ministries, and coded projects.
Clara found the section marked Aurelia.
The first file contained medical reports from twenty-nine years earlier.
The second contained photographs of pregnant women entering a private Calder clinic.
The third carried the royal crest.
Clara read until the words blurred.
Project Aurelia had begun under King Lucien.
It was officially described as a genetic health program designed to protect the royal line from hereditary illness.
Unofficially, it had created embryos from royal genetic material.
“The second heir,” Clara whispered.
Mrs. Bell crossed herself.
Clara opened another file.
Most of the embryos had been destroyed after Fire Night.
One had been implanted.
The mother’s name was redacted.
The child had been born eight months after the palace attack.
A girl.
Current status: active.
Clara searched for a name.
The final page was missing.
A door slammed above them.
Voices entered the tunnel.
Mrs. Bell extinguished the cellar light.
“We must go.”
Clara took the medical report and the photograph marked Project Aurelia.
They exited through a drainage passage that opened beyond the estate wall.
Rain soaked them within seconds.
Mrs. Bell led Clara to a gardener’s shed where an old motorcycle waited beneath a tarp.
“You planned this.”
“I have waited seventeen years to leave that house.”
“Why stay?”
Mrs. Bell looked back toward Calder Hall.
“My daughter disappeared after taking a cleaning position in Damian’s father’s clinic. I believed the records might tell me what happened.”
“Did you find her?”
“No.”
Clara looked at the photograph in her hand.
The woman holding the newborn had her face turned away.
But a bracelet circled her wrist.
The initials E.W. had been engraved into the silver.
Clara stopped breathing.
Evelyn Whitmore.
“No,” she whispered.
Mrs. Bell looked at the photograph.
“You know her?”
“It is my mother.”
Clara’s mind raced.
Twenty-nine years earlier.
A child born eight months after Fire Night.
Clara was twenty-nine.
The road seemed to move beneath her.
“I am the second heir.”
Mrs. Bell stared.
Behind them, alarm lights ignited across Calder Hall.
“Whatever you are,” she said, “we need to leave.”
They rode through the forest as vehicles poured from the estate.
Mrs. Bell drove. Clara held the files beneath her coat.
Headlights appeared behind them.
Gunfire cracked through the rain.
The motorcycle swerved.
They reached a bridge above a flooded gorge.
A council vehicle blocked the far end.
Mrs. Bell braked.
Three vehicles closed behind them.
Damian stepped from the nearest car beneath a black umbrella.
“Clara,” he called. “Come back.”
She climbed off the motorcycle.
Mrs. Bell whispered, “There is a maintenance ladder beneath the bridge.”
Clara looked at the raging water below.
Damian approached.
“You do not understand what you found.”
“I understand why you need my signature.”
His gaze dropped to the folder beneath her coat.
“Give me the records.”
“What am I?”
Damian stopped several yards away.
“You are Clara Whitmore.”
“Was I created from the royal family?”
Rain struck the umbrella between them.
Damian’s silence answered.
“Whose child am I?”
“Your mother carried you.”
“That was not my question.”
He lowered the umbrella.
Water ran through his hair.
“You were created from an embryo authorized by King Lucien.”
“And the genetic parents?”
“Lucien and Marianne.”
Clara felt the world go silent.
Arthur’s parents.
Her parents.
“No.”
“The king feared the royal line would end. The project was legal when it began.”
“Arthur is my brother.”
“Genetically.”
She nearly dropped the files.
Every kiss, every promise, every moment returned as horror.
Damian stepped closer.
“Arthur does not know.”
Clara backed toward the bridge rail.
“You showed him no evidence.”
“We intended to reveal it after he entered the capital.”
“To destroy him.”
“To destroy both of you.”
“Why both?”
“Because a disputed royal bloodline gives the council legal authority to abolish the Crown.”
Clara’s hands went numb.
Damian reached for her.
“Come with me. We can contain this.”
“Contain it?”
“No one needs to know.”
“I need to know.”
“The records may be false.”
“You just confirmed them.”
“I confirmed what Voss believes.”
Clara looked toward the gorge.
Then at Mrs. Bell.
The older woman gave the smallest nod.
Clara threw the folder over the bridge.
Damian lunged.
Mrs. Bell kicked his knee.
Clara climbed over the railing and grabbed the maintenance ladder beneath the bridge.
Shots rang out.
Mrs. Bell cried out.
Clara looked up.
The older woman had been struck in the side.
She fell against the rail.
Damian shouted at the guards to stop firing.
Mrs. Bell looked down at Clara.
“Find my daughter,” she whispered.
Then she released the rail and fell into the river.
Clara screamed.
Damian reached over the edge.
“Take my hand!”
Clara climbed lower.
“You will die.”
“Better than belonging to you.”
A helicopter thundered above the gorge.
Searchlights swept across the bridge.
Royal guards descended by rope.
Damian raised his weapon.
A shot struck it from his hand.
Arthur appeared at the open helicopter door.
“Clara!”
She looked up at him.
Her brother.
Her fiancé.
Her entire body went cold.
May you like
The ladder tore loose from the bridge.
Clara fell.
