Chapter 8 - THE SECRET ISABELLA TOOK TO HER GRAVE
For one second I could not understand what I was seeing.
Richard lay partly across me.
His face was pale.
Blood darkened his shoulder.
“Richard.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding!”
“Shoulder.”
Another shot cracked.
His men returned fire toward the shattered window while dragging us behind a stone column.
Dominic had disappeared.
Of course he had.
“Stay down,” Richard ordered.
“You’re currently leaking on me.”
“It missed anything important.”
“Your definition of important is insane.”
Despite the pain, he almost smiled.
Then his face tightened.
“Did he touch you?”
I stared.
“You were shot and you’re asking me that?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Good.”
“You are impossible.”
The shooter escaped.
Dominic escaped.
Richard was stitched up by a private physician in a secure room beneath Lancaster House, because apparently hospitals were optional when you had sufficient money and enemies.
I sat beside him.
Neither of us mentioned how his hand had covered the back of my head when the shot came.
Neither of us mentioned that he had used his body to shield mine.
Finally I said, “Who was my mother?”
Richard looked at the ceiling.
“I don’t know.”
“Dominic said Isabella knew.”
“He may have been manipulating you.”
“He knew she was searching for me.”
“Yes.”
“So we find out.”
Richard sighed.
“Your father’s records?”
“Not enough.”
“Birth certificate?”
“My mother’s name is listed as Rebecca Hart.”
“Do you remember her?”
“No. Dad said she left when I was a baby.”
“Photographs?”
“Almost none.”
Richard’s eyes narrowed.
“Almost?”
“One.”
We searched my storage boxes.
Among photographs from childhood was a faded picture of my father standing beside a blonde woman holding a baby.
Me.
Richard stared at her.
“I know that woman.”
My pulse jumped.
“Who?”
“Margaret Vale.”
The floor vanished beneath me.
“Vale?”
“Gabriel’s older sister.”
I sat down.
“Isabella’s sister?”
“Half-sister. Margaret was nearly fifteen years older than Isabella.”
I could barely breathe.
“What happened to her?”
“She disappeared from the Vale family before Isabella and I married. I was told she went to Europe.”
“When?”
“About thirty years ago.”
I was thirty.
The arithmetic was brutal.
“My mother was Isabella’s sister.”
“If the photograph is what it appears to be.”
“Then Alex and Max are…”
“Your nephews.”
I laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because sometimes the human brain chooses absurdity when reality becomes too large.
“I accidentally agreed to marry my dead aunt’s husband.”
Richard looked pained.
“When you say it that way—”
“How else should I say it?”
“We are not biologically related.”
“That is not the part making this weird!”
He closed his eyes.
I stood.
“Isabella knew.”
“Apparently.”
“Which means she wasn’t searching for me because of the ledger.”
“Not only because of it.”
“Gabriel knew too.”
Richard’s expression darkened.
“Yes.”
That changed everything.
If I was Margaret Vale’s daughter, I might have some claim to Vale family assets.
More importantly, I was blood family to Alex and Max.
A potential guardian.
Someone Gabriel might consider a direct threat.
“Richard.”
He already understood.
“Gabriel engineered your eviction.”
“So I’d be exposed.”
“Or so you’d disappear before I found you.”
My skin chilled.
“What happened to my mother?”
“We need proof before assuming.”
“Where do we get proof?”
Richard looked toward Isabella’s journal.
“The missing pages.”
Teresa remembered something.
On the last Christmas before Isabella died, she had given Alex a wooden music box and told him it contained “something for later.”
Alex still had it.
He brought it downstairs suspiciously.
“Why?”
“Because grown-ups are apparently terrible at storing important things normally,” I said.
He handed it over.
The wooden bottom contained a hidden compartment.
Inside were folded pages.
Isabella’s missing diary entries.
Richard sat beside me.
We read together.
Margaret is alive.
I stopped.
Richard swore under his breath.
The entry continued.
Gabriel has kept her hidden for years because their father changed his will after learning Margaret had a daughter.
My chest tightened.
Vale money was not divided equally. Margaret inherited voting control of the family holding company. If she dies, control passes to Elena.
I stared at Richard.
“Control?”
“Vale International is worth billions.”
“I have fourteen dollars in my checking account.”
“Apparently your financial situation may improve.”
“This is not funny.”
“No.”
Another entry:
Gabriel convinced everyone Margaret was unstable. He isolated her. By the time I discovered the truth, he had moved her again.
My hands trembled.
My mother had not abandoned me.
At least, maybe not willingly.
Isabella wrote that Margaret had fallen in love with Thomas Hart, a young accountant whom the Vale family considered socially unacceptable.
When Elena was born, Thomas took the child because Gabriel threatened to destroy them both.
Margaret later tried to escape.
She vanished.
Isabella had spent years quietly searching.
Then she discovered Gabriel and Dominic’s financial alliance.
The same alliance Thomas had discovered.
Richard’s wife and my father had been following the same trail from different directions.
The final missing page contained an address.
A private rehabilitation facility in Connecticut.
Rosemere.
Richard’s security team discovered it had closed eighteen months earlier.
But records showed one long-term patient had been transferred shortly before closure.
Patient M-17.
Destination unknown.
We might never have found more if Alex had not spoken.
“Aunt Isabella used to call somewhere every Thursday.”
Richard looked at him.
“How do you know?”
“She called from my room because Dad’s office had cameras.”
Richard looked offended.
“My office did not have cameras.”
“It did after Uncle Gabriel gave you that statue.”
Richard froze.
“What statue?”
“The horse.”
Security removed the bronze horse from Richard’s former office.
Inside was an old listening device.
Gabriel had been spying on him.
Alex remembered one telephone number because Isabella made him memorize it “in case she ever went away.”
The number still worked.
At eight that night, Richard called.
A woman answered.
When he asked about Margaret Vale, the line went silent.
Then the woman whispered, “Who is this?”
“Elena Hart’s family.”
A long pause.
“Oh my God.”
The woman’s name was Dr. Amelia Ross.
She had treated Margaret secretly after realizing the Vale family had falsified portions of her psychiatric history.
“Margaret was not insane,” she said. “She was sedated for years.”
My hands went numb.
“Where is she now?”
Dr. Ross hesitated.
“She was moved six months ago.”
“By whom?” Richard asked.
“Her brother.”
Gabriel.
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
I leaned toward the phone.
“Please. This is Elena.”
Silence.
Then Dr. Ross started crying.
“Your mother talked about you every day.”
My throat closed.
“She thought I was dead.”
I could not speak.
“She kept a photograph of you as a baby underneath her mattress because staff were ordered to remove anything connecting her to Thomas.”
Richard’s hand closed around mine.
Our rule about touching disappeared without discussion.
“Where did Gabriel take her?” I whispered.
“I heard one of the drivers mention a property near Cold Spring.”
Richard’s men immediately began searching Vale-owned properties.
They found one.
An isolated estate registered to a subsidiary.
We left before midnight.
Forty minutes later, the convoy reached a stone house surrounded by woods.
The front door was unlocked.
Inside, every room was empty.
Medication bottles remained on a bedside table.
A woman’s sweater lay across a chair.
Still warm.
“They knew we were coming,” Richard said.
Then my borrowed phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
“Elena?”
A woman’s trembling voice.
My entire body froze.
“Mom?”
She began sobbing.
Then Gabriel Vale came onto the line.
“Hello, niece.”
My blood turned to ice.
“Where is she?”
“Alive.”
“What do you want?”
“The ledger.”
“I don’t have it.”
“You will find it.”
Behind him, I heard my mother crying.
Then Gabriel said five words that made Richard go still beside me.
May you like
“Bring me Richard’s sons too.”
And the line went dead.
