Chapter 8 - The Daughter of the House
Daniel could not speak.
Elena looked older than the hospital footage, or perhaps simply more tired. Gray threaded her dark hair. The scar above her eyebrow remained. She wore a plain coat and held no weapon.
“Jonathan had a daughter?” Daniel asked.
“With a woman named Isabel Vale,” Elena replied. “Your biological aunt.”
The relationships twisted in Daniel’s mind. If Isabel was his biological mother’s sister, then Hannah was his cousin.
He took a step backward.
Elena saw the horror on his face. “Not by blood.”
“You just said Isabel Vale was her mother.”
“I said Jonathan was her father. Her mother was not Isabel. The records were falsified to make the Custodians believe she carried Vale blood.”
Adrian leaned against a bassinet, watching Daniel struggle.
“Who was her mother?”
“Elena,” Adrian said.
Daniel looked at her.
She did not deny it.
Elena explained that she and Jonathan had loved each other before he married Victoria. When Elena discovered the clinic’s trafficking scheme, she went undercover as a nurse. Jonathan became her secret ally. Their daughter was born during the investigation and placed with Frank and Rose for protection.
“Hannah is your half-sister,” Adrian said.
Daniel felt his knees weaken.
Elena corrected him. “Jonathan raised you, but he was not your biological father. You and Hannah share no blood.”
Legally and emotionally, however, Jonathan was Daniel’s father. The revelation carried its own violence.
“Did Victoria know?”
“Yes.”
Daniel laughed without humor. “Of course she did.”
Elena handed him a bundle of letters tied with blue ribbon. Jonathan had written them over twenty years but never sent them. They were addressed to Hannah.
My dear daughter.
Daniel read only the first line before closing the bundle.
“Why hide this?”
“Because Hannah’s false Vale profile made her valuable,” Elena said. “If the Custodians knew she was Jonathan’s child, they would have used her to control him. If they knew she lacked Vale blood, they would have discarded her.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened at the word.
Daniel turned to him. “You brought me here to reveal this. What do you want?”
“The trust dissolved.”
“And the money?”
“Returned to the people Halcyon used.”
“That sounds noble.”
“It isn’t. I want Victoria ruined. I want every Custodian named. And I want the person who killed Mira to face me.”
“Who killed her?”
Elena’s eyes filled with grief. “She did not die naturally. Someone injected potassium into her IV.”
Daniel looked at Adrian.
“That is why I came to the party,” Adrian said. “The killer was on the guest list.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. Elena has part of the clinic log. Victoria has the rest.”
Daniel thought of the room filled with guests, the politicians and investors, the smiling faces. One of them might have murdered an unregistered newborn to prevent a trust claim.
A noise echoed in the corridor.
Adrian extinguished a lantern.
Three armed figures entered the far end of the nursery. Their faces were covered. Daniel dropped behind a counter as bullets struck metal bassinets. Elena pulled him through a side door. Adrian returned fire with a pistol Daniel had not seen.
They fled into the surgical wing.
The attackers knew the building. They blocked exits and drove them toward the basement. Elena opened a laundry chute, and they slid into a room filled with old linens and mold. Adrian followed, bleeding from his shoulder.
Daniel tore fabric to make a bandage.
“You said you would not use kindness,” Adrian muttered.
“This is pressure on a wound, not kindness.”
For the first time, Adrian almost smiled.
Police sirens approached. The attackers withdrew before officers surrounded the hospital. One was caught near the loading dock. Under his mask, Daniel recognized a server from the baby’s party.
The man carried a card printed with a silver cradle.
Priya later identified him as an employee of Vale Meridian Bank, the institution holding Halcyon’s dormant accounts.
At dawn, Daniel returned to the apartment with Elena.
Frank opened the door and stared at his sister as though seeing a ghost.
“Elena?”
She slapped him.
Then she embraced him.
Rose wept. Hannah stood in the hallway holding Lily, unable to move.
Elena approached slowly.
“My little girl,” she whispered.
Hannah backed away. “You don’t get to call me that.”
Elena stopped.
Daniel placed Jonathan’s letters on the table.
Hannah looked at the blue ribbon, then at Daniel.
“What did you learn?”
He told her everything.
She listened without interrupting. When he finished, she sat beside the letters but did not touch them.
Then the apartment television switched on by itself.
A live news broadcast filled the screen.
Reporters stood outside the Mercer mansion. Behind them, federal agents carried boxes from the burned archive.
A headline appeared:
MERCER HEIR INVESTIGATED IN 18 MILLION DOLLAR TRUST FRAUD.
The camera cut to Victoria being escorted down the front steps in handcuffs.
Before entering the car, she looked directly into the cameras and said, “My son is not the heir.”
May you like
Then she smiled.
“The baby is.”
