Chapter 10 - The Ghost of the Estate
I walked slowly toward the empty containment cylinder, my boots crunching over frost crystals, the heavy weight of the revelation crushing down on my chest with suffocating force.
Calvin Mercer hadn't just embezzled funds; he had been the warden of a private prison built beneath my own nursery. And Richard Vance hadn't come here tonight for a vault key or a data override—he had come to retrieve the physical files proving that Lucia Moretti had been systematically drugged and held captive long after her supposed "death."
"Boss," Marco said quietly, his voice laced with unease as he inspected a stack of paper files resting on the nearby desk. "Look at the date on these medical logs. The last entry... it was signed yesterday."
I ripped the file from Marco's hand.
The ink was fresh. The signature at the bottom of the medical observation sheet wasn't Calvin's, and it wasn't Vance's. It belonged to Dr. Gable—my trusted family pediatrician who had been standing upstairs in the nursery two hours ago claiming the triplets were in perfect health.
Before I could process the treachery, the heavy iron security door at the top of the stone staircase slammed shut with a deafening clank.
A heavy steel deadbolt slid into place with a mechanical whir.
"Trap!" Marco shouted, rushing back toward the stairs. He grabbed the iron handle and threw his weight against it, but the door didn't budge.
May you like
From the overhead intercom speaker mounted in the stone wall, a voice crackled to life—not Vance's, and not Calvin's. It was Dr. Gable's voice, smooth, calm, and chillingly polite.
"I'm sorry, Adrien," the pediatrician's voice echoed through the damp chamber. "Some secrets were never meant to see the light of day. And your children... well, they inherited far too much of their aunt's resonance."
