Chapter 24 - The Apartment with No ExitPolice surrounded Mara’s apartment building before dawn.
Charles was no longer inside.
There were no signs of forced entry, and security footage showed no one entering after Mara had left for the reunion.
On the kitchen table stood a laptop playing a prerecorded message.
Charles smiled from the screen.
“If you are watching this, Mara, the police have already searched the rooms and found nothing useful. Eleanor taught all of us to prepare an exit before making an entrance.”
He held up the founding key.
His key.
“You possess Crown One. I possess Crown Five. Neither opens the offshore registry alone.”
The image shifted.
Elise appeared bound to a chair.
Mara turned toward the officers.
Elise had been under guard at the resort less than an hour earlier.
Sofia called Adrian.
The guard outside Elise’s room had been found unconscious. The woman sleeping in the bed was wearing an Elise facial prosthetic.
Helena had escaped custody by switching places with her.
Mara looked back at the screen.
Had Charles captured Elise—or Helena?
Charles continued.
“Bring Crown One to the eastern marina at sunset. Come with Adrian. No police.”
The video ended.
Daniel examined the writing on the wall.
“Lose the mother,” he said. “He didn’t say your mother.”
Mara felt the same unease.
Vivian was still at the resort.
Margaret had disappeared with Victor.
Helena could be Charles’s prisoner or his partner.
There were too many women claiming the role of mother and too many men attempting to own their identities.
Patricia opened Eleanor’s original letter.
“The first letters still make no sense.”
Mara examined them again.
I. Y. T. G. L. T. D. A. F.
Then she remembered the sentence beneath the lighthouse:
Trust no document unless it bears the mark.
She held the letter over steam.
Additional words appeared between Eleanor’s original lines.
Invert your trust. Grandmother lies. The daughter arrives first.
Daniel whispered, “The daughter arrives first.”
At that moment, someone knocked on the apartment door.
A young woman stood outside.
She appeared to be in her early twenties. She had Mara’s eyes and Adrian’s jaw.
She handed Mara a seventh founding key.
“My name is Celeste Vale,” she said.
“Helena was my mother.”
Adrian stepped forward.
“That’s impossible.”
May you like
Celeste looked at him without affection.
“No. What’s impossible is that she convinced you she only stole one child.”
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