Chapter 10 - The Girl at the Family Table
Federal agents arrived at St. Orison before dawn.
They found seven children alive in the lower dormitories, two staff members hiding in a boiler room, and Leonard Vale’s body caught beneath a broken pew in the flooded chapel.
They did not find Eleanor.
They did not find the girl shown on James’s monitor.
James survived the poison capsule after emergency treatment, but he remained unconscious under armed guard. Doctors could not determine when or whether he would wake.
The surviving children were transported to a protected pediatric unit. Each carried a different legal identity. Three had death certificates. Two had been reported missing. One had never officially existed.
Gabriel refused to be separated from Mariana.
At the hospital, he sat beside her bed while doctors treated the damage to her knee and the infection that had spread through the bone. Alex remained outside the room until Mariana invited him in.
The invitation consisted of four words.
“You can sit there.”
She pointed to a chair near the door.
It was not forgiveness, but it was more than he deserved.
Gabriel looked between them.
“Who is Victoria?”
Alex knew only one Victoria who had ever sat regularly at the Mercer family table.
Victoria Hale was the daughter of Eleanor’s closest friend. After her parents died in a boating accident, Eleanor became her guardian. Victoria had grown up in Mercer House from the age of three. She was now fifteen.
The same age as Gabriel.
Alex had treated her like a younger cousin. She called Eleanor Grandmother. She attended private school in Chicago and spent holidays at the house.
Mariana listened as he explained.
“Where is she now?”
Alex called the school.
Victoria had not attended classes for four days.
Her apartment was empty.
Her phone was disconnected.
Daniel searched Mercer House and found her bedroom stripped of personal items. The only thing left was a framed photograph of Victoria at age five sitting on Eleanor’s lap.
Behind the photograph was a hospital bracelet.
Baby Girl Mercer.
Mariana began to cry without sound.
Gabriel stood so abruptly his chair fell.
“She was there all this time.”
Alex could not answer.
He remembered birthday dinners, Christmas mornings, summer afternoons by the lake. He remembered Victoria asking why he never had children. He remembered Eleanor watching both of them whenever Alex replied that life had made other plans.
The cruelty was too precise to be accidental.
Victoria had been placed within reach but hidden by familiarity.
Samuel Reed arrived with the DNA report from the blood card.
“The newborn sample is a paternal match to you,” he told Alex. “It also contains two sets of genetic material.”
“Twins?” Mariana asked.
“Likely contamination from shared cord blood or mixed sampling. We need Victoria’s DNA to confirm.”
Gabriel opened the photograph from St. Orison.
“Elise does not look exactly like Victoria.”
“No,” Samuel said. “The video may have been prerecorded, altered, or staged with another girl.”
Alex felt hope and dread collide.
“Then Victoria may not be our daughter.”
“She may not,” Samuel said. “But someone wanted us to believe she was.”
Daniel entered carrying a sealed envelope found in Eleanor’s private safe.
It was addressed to Alex.
The letter inside had been written fifteen years earlier.
Alexander,
By the time you read this, you will know enough to hate me and not enough to understand. James took the girl before I reached the hospital. I took the boy before James could complete the transfer. For three days, both children were hidden under different names.
Then Leonard betrayed me.
He returned the boy to James and brought me a girl he claimed was yours. I raised her in this house because I could not prove whether he lied. I loved her because uncertainty was the only mercy left to me.
If Victoria is your daughter, protect her from James.
If she is not, protect her anyway.
Do not trust the death certificates. Do not trust the birth records. Most of all, do not trust the woman who calls herself Victoria’s mother.
Eleanor
Alex read the final line twice.
“Victoria believes her parents died.”
Samuel shook his head.
“Officially, yes. But the letter suggests a woman may have appeared later.”
Gabriel turned over the framed photograph.
A small piece of paper slipped from the backing.
On it was a Chicago address and a time.
Tonight. 8:00 p.m.
May you like
Below that, in Victoria’s handwriting, were the words:
I know who my mother is. She says Mariana stole my brother.
