Chapter 14 11:47
The words echoed through the library long after Richard spoke them.
"We buried the truth."
No one interrupted the silence.
Marcus slowly picked up the brass pocket watch from the evidence tray. Its cracked glass reflected the overhead lights, frozen forever at 11:47.
He looked at Richard.
"What happened on October 18, 1998?"
Richard didn't answer immediately.
Instead, he removed his glasses and rubbed his tired eyes.
"I've spent twenty-eight years praying this day would never come."
Leo stepped closer.
"Grandfather..."
Richard looked at all of us before finally speaking.
"That wasn't the night someone died."
He swallowed.
"It was the night someone disappeared."
Marcus opened his notebook.
"Who?"
Richard's eyes drifted toward Grace, peacefully asleep in her bassinet.
"A little girl."
The room fell silent.
"A Sinclair?"
Richard nodded.
"Her name was Victoria."
I frowned.
"I've never heard of her."
"You weren't supposed to."
Richard stood and walked to the fireplace.
"Victoria was your mother's older sister."
I stared at him.
"My mother had a sister?"
"She was four years old."
"And she vanished?"
Richard slowly nodded.
"Without a trace."
Leo frowned.
"The police investigated."
"For years."
"They found nothing."
Richard gave a bitter smile.
"They found exactly what someone wanted them to find."
Marcus immediately looked up.
"Blackstone."
Richard didn't answer.
He didn't have to.
Meanwhile...
Dominic sat alone in his penthouse, surrounded by unopened mail and legal notices.
His suspension from Vance Holdings had become front-page news.
Investors were filing lawsuits.
Banks were freezing credit lines.
Everything he'd spent years building was collapsing.
His phone buzzed.
Another unknown number.
He almost ignored it.
Instead...
He answered.
"Who is this?"
A calm female voice replied.
"You finally know your father."
Dominic stood.
"Who are you?"
"You've been asking the wrong questions."
"What do you want?"
"The question isn't who raised you."
A pause.
"It's why."
The line disconnected.
Back at Sinclair & Black...
Marcus and Leo searched through decades of archived newspaper records.
Nothing mentioned Victoria Sinclair.
No missing child reports.
No funeral.
No obituary.
Nothing.
It was as if she had never existed.
Marcus looked at Richard.
"Someone erased her."
Richard nodded.
"They erased an entire year."
He opened the old leather journal from the vault.
Near the center was a folded photograph.
It showed two little girls standing beneath the massive oak tree at the Sinclair estate.
One was my mother.
The other...
A smiling little blonde girl holding a stuffed rabbit.
Richard gently touched the photograph.
"Victoria."
My heart tightened.
"So she was real."
"Very."
Richard closed the journal.
"And she was supposed to inherit the Ledger."
I frowned.
"What changed?"
"She disappeared."
"So the responsibility passed..."
"To your mother."
"And eventually..."
He looked at Grace.
"...to you."
Marcus suddenly froze.
"Wait."
He turned toward Richard.
"Earlier you said Blackstone needed both the Ledger and the Key."
Richard nodded.
"They already know Grace has the Ledger."
"And now..."
Marcus looked at the silver key resting inside its velvet pouch.
"...they know she has the Key."
Silence settled over the room.
Every security measure we'd taken suddenly felt inadequate.
Across town...
Olivia Vance stood outside the small chapel where she had left the sealed envelope for the priest.
She hurried inside.
The elderly priest greeted her warmly.
"I was expecting you."
"My envelope."
He looked confused.
"It's gone."
Olivia's face drained of color.
"What?"
"A woman collected it this morning."
"What woman?"
"She said you sent her."
"I sent no one."
The priest frowned.
"She knew your name."
"And Amelia's."
Olivia rushed outside.
For the first time in decades...
She realized someone inside Blackstone knew every move she made.
That evening...
Marcus received the forensic analysis of the brass pocket watch.
The watchmaker's serial number had been partially restored.
It had been manufactured in Switzerland in 1956.
But another detail caught the analyst's attention.
Hidden inside the watch case was a tiny strip of folded paper.
Marcus carefully unfolded it.
Coordinates.
Nothing else.
Leo immediately entered them into a map.
The location appeared sixty miles north of the city.
An abandoned estate.
Richard stared at the screen.
"No..."
Marcus looked at him.
"You know it?"
Richard whispered,
"Blackwood Nursery."
"It wasn't just a mansion," Richard explained.
"Behind the main house stood a private children's residence."
Marcus frowned.
"For whose children?"
Richard looked away.
"For the heirs."
The word lingered in the air.
"Heirs?"
Richard nodded.
"The Blackstone families believed future leaders should be educated together."
Leo folded his arms.
"That sounds like a boarding school."
Richard shook his head.
"It wasn't a school."
"It was training."
At the same moment...
A surveillance team parked outside Margaret Ashcroft's estate radioed Marcus.
"Movement."
Marcus answered immediately.
"What did you see?"
"A vehicle just left the property."
"Who's inside?"
"Margaret."
"And?"
"There was another passenger."
"Can you identify them?"
A long pause.
Then...
"No."
"The windows are blacked out."
Marcus made the decision instantly.
"Follow them."
Thirty minutes later...
The surveillance vehicle stopped outside an old cemetery.
Margaret stepped out carrying fresh white lilies.
She walked alone toward the oldest section of the cemetery.
Agents watched from a distance.
She stopped before a weathered gravestone.
The name had almost completely faded.
One investigator quietly photographed it with a telephoto lens.
When the image reached Marcus's phone...
His blood ran cold.
The gravestone read:
EVELYN BLACKWOOD
1928–1998
Marcus frowned.
"She died in 1998."
Leo looked at him.
"Then why does everyone insist she's still alive?"
Marcus zoomed in further.
There was something carved into the bottom of the stone.
Almost invisible.
Three words.
No Body Found.
Back at the guesthouse...
I tucked Grace into her crib and quietly closed the nursery door.
As I turned toward the hallway, I noticed something lying on the floor outside her room.
A child's stuffed rabbit.
Old.
Faded.
One button eye missing.
My heart stopped.
I had seen it before.
In Richard's photograph.
It had belonged to Victoria Sinclair.
Attached to one ear was a tiny handwritten tag.
May you like
It read:
She remembers.
