Chapter 3 - The Secret in the Mud
The realization hit me like a physical blow, leaving me completely breathless in the back of the speeding sedan. Thomas’s first wife, Sarah, had supposedly died of an unexpected postpartum pulmonary embolism seven years ago, right after giving birth to a stillborn son. That was the tragedy that had allegedly broken Thomas, the grief that had made him the brooding, distant man I thought I was saving when I married him.
It was all a lie. It was a calculated, multi-generational slaughter.
"Maya, we can't go to your apartment," I said, my voice shaking as I held Clara close. Her color was returning, a beautiful, pale pink replacing the deadly blue. "Thomas knows where you live. Beatrice has the local police department in her pocket. If we go to a public hospital or your place, they will arrest me for kidnapping my own child and make her disappear for good."
"Where do we go then?" Maya asked, her hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel as the storm raged outside. "We need to get the baby warm, and you’re bleeding through your gown, Eleanor."
"Drive to the old logging cabins in Blackwood Crest," I said. "Our grandfather’s old property. It’s abandoned, the title is still under a shell company, and there’s a wood stove. We can hide there until I can figure out how to expose them."
Two hours later, we arrived at the isolated cabin, hidden deep within a dense forest of pine and shadow. The rain had slowed to a miserable, freezing drizzle. Maya carried Quincy inside while I walked slowly, holding Clara like she was the rarest diamond on earth.
Inside, the cabin was freezing and smelled of dust and old cedar. Maya immediately went to work, splitting old firewood and lighting the iron stove. Within twenty minutes, a thick, radiant heat began to fill the small room. I wrapped Clara in a clean, dry flannel shirt I found in an old trunk, finally allowing myself to sit down on the worn velvet sofa.
Quincy sat on the floor near my feet, staring intently at the fire.
"Quincy," I said softly, reaching out to touch his tangled hair. "How do you know about your little brother? You were only three years old when Sarah died."
Quincy looked up, his eyes reflecting the amber flames of the stove. "I hid in the linen closet because Mommy Sarah was screaming at Nana. Nana told her that the Vance blood line could never be tainted by a woman from the valley. Mommy Sarah had a paper. A paper that showed Dad wasn't a real Vance. He was adopted. Nana did it to steal the family company from the real heirs."
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My breath hitched. The pieces of the puzzle were spinning into an ugly, terrifying picture. Beatrice Vance wasn't protecting a noble bloodline. She was protecting a multi-billion-dollar corporate fraud. And anyone who discovered the truth—or threatened her control by giving birth to a legitimate heir—had to be eliminated.
Suddenly, the headlights of a car flashed through the grimy front windows of the cabin, cutting through the darkness like twin daggers.
