Chapter 5 - The Maid in the Chapel
Celeste and Reed left immediately.
Dr. Kline remained behind.
Maren stayed hidden under the desk, listening to his uneven breathing.
He walked toward the window.
Rain began tapping against the glass.
Kline removed his phone and made a call.
“She knows,” he whispered.
A pause.
“No, not everything. But Celeste is accelerating the plan.”
Another pause.
“I cannot protect both of them.”
Maren’s heart pounded.
Both of whom?
Kline turned away from the balcony.
“You promised Evelyn would stay hidden.”
The person on the other end spoke long enough for Kline to interrupt.
“No. If she enters the house, Celeste will release the files.”
Another pause.
“Yes, the adoption files.”
Maren leaned closer.
Kline lowered his voice further.
“The other daughter is still in the country.”
The words struck Maren harder than the fall from the wheelchair would later that evening.
Another daughter.
Dr. Kline walked toward the door.
“I’ll move Maren before dinner.”
He ended the call and left.
The moment the door closed, Maren emerged.
She opened Reed’s laptop again and copied the security map to the black phone. Then she examined the fourth photograph.
The man’s face had been scratched away, but part of his uniform remained visible.
A patch showed a winged serpent wrapped around a sword.
Maren had seen the symbol before.
It appeared on the side of the private ambulance that transported her after the accident on Blackridge Road.
Not a public emergency vehicle.
A contractor.
She photographed the image and searched the old Vale Meridian archive through the secure phone.
The symbol belonged to Aegis Crown, a private security and medical logistics company dissolved twenty-eight years earlier after allegations of illegal adoptions and evidence trafficking.
The company’s director had been Silas Voss.
The name appeared in her father’s private correspondence.
Silas Voss was officially dead.
So was Evelyn Vale.
So, according to a hospital certificate, was Maren herself.
She copied the photograph and returned it to the desk.
Then she wheeled into the hallway.
Voices echoed from the west wing.
Maren moved toward them.
At the top of the staircase, she paused beside the empty place where the fourth photograph had hung. A clean rectangle remained on the wallpaper.
The other family portraits surrounded it.
Reed as a boy.
Celeste beside her late husband, Conrad Halston.
Maren and Reed on their wedding day.
Edmund Vale at a charity gala.
Every photograph presented a different lie.
Maren reached behind the empty hook.
Her fingers found a thin strip of paper taped to the wall.
She removed it.
A sequence of numbers had been written across it.
0417-22-9.
A date?
A file number?
She slipped it beneath the fabric covering her wheelchair armrest.
Then she continued toward the west wing.
The voices grew louder.
“You broke into a restricted area,” Reed said.
Lila answered, “I was cleaning.”
“At the chapel?”
“Mrs. Halston asked me to dust it.”
Celeste’s voice cut through the corridor.
“I have not entered that chapel in twelve years.”
Maren turned the corner.
Lila stood between two security guards outside the chapel doors. Her uniform was dusty, and blood marked the side of her forehead.
The gray evidence bag was nowhere in sight.
Celeste stood in front of her.
“Search her,” she ordered.
One guard reached for Lila.
“Stop,” Maren said.
Everyone turned.
Reed’s face darkened.
“You were locked in your room.”
“You should choose better locks.”
Celeste looked toward the guard.
“Search the chair.”
Maren kept moving.
“Touch me and Vale Meridian will own everything your children inherit.”
The guard hesitated.
Celeste smiled.
“You have no authority over Vale Meridian.”
“Then why are you trying so hard to steal it?”
Reed stepped forward.
“Maren, go back to your room.”
She stopped beside Lila.
“What happened to her head?”
“She fell,” Celeste said.
Lila looked at the floor.
Maren noticed dust on the front of her uniform and a fresh tear near her pocket.
She had not simply fallen.
Someone had dragged her.
“Where is the bag?” Celeste asked.
Lila did not answer.
Celeste raised a hand.
Maren rolled between them.
“Strike her,” she said, “and I will make sure every camera in this mansion remembers it.”
Celeste’s hand remained suspended.
Then she slowly lowered it.
“The cameras are mine.”
“Are they?”
Celeste’s gaze sharpened.
Maren knew she had revealed too much again.
But Lila was alive.
For now.
Reed motioned to the guards.
“Take Lila to the staff quarters. Lock the door.”
“No,” Celeste said. “Take her downstairs.”
Lila’s face went white.
Maren asked, “What is downstairs?”
Celeste’s smile returned.
“Storage.”
The guards took Lila by the arms.
Maren grabbed the nearest guard’s sleeve.
“Release her.”
He looked toward Reed.
Reed said nothing.
Celeste nodded.
The guards dragged Lila away.
She twisted once and looked back at Maren.
Her lips moved.
Three silent words.
UNDER THE ALTAR.
Then she disappeared around the corner.
Maren turned toward the chapel.
Celeste blocked her path.
“Dinner at seven,” she said. “You should rest.”
“Where are you taking Lila?”
“She stole from me.”
“She found something you failed to burn.”
Celeste leaned down until her face was level with Maren’s.
“Your father used to speak to me exactly as you do.”
“What happened to him?”
“You attended his funeral.”
“That was not my question.”
For the first time, pain appeared in Celeste’s eyes.
Real pain.
Then it vanished.
“Edmund believed blood made people loyal,” she said. “He learned too late that blood only makes betrayal more expensive.”
She stepped aside.
Maren entered the chapel.
Dust covered the pews. Rain pressed gray light through stained-glass windows. At the far end stood a dark wooden altar carved with roses and thorns.
The room smelled of cold stone and old incense.
Maren rolled forward.
She checked beneath the altar.
Nothing.
Then she noticed one carved rose had been turned sideways.
She pressed it.
A panel opened near the floor.
Inside lay the gray evidence bag.
Beside it was a photograph of two newborn girls.
One wore a bracelet marked MAREN VALE.
The other wore a bracelet marked ELARA VOSS.
On the back, someone had written:
THE SISTERS MUST NEVER MEET.
Maren stared at the picture.
A floorboard creaked behind her.
May you like
Dr. Kline stood in the chapel doorway.
He held a syringe.
