Chapter 10 - The Blood in the Garage
Sarah survived.
The bang was a metal door slamming during her escape.
No gun.
No convenient fake-out death dragged across chapters.
Marcus traced the location from background audio.
An abandoned Hale storage facility.
Police found Sarah nearby.
Barefoot.
Exhausted.
Alive.
Daniel held her for nearly a minute without speaking.
Lily ran into her arms.
Sarah cried when she saw the bruising around Lily’s scalp from Eleanor’s grip.
She looked at Eleanor.
Eleanor could not meet her eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
Sarah’s expression hardened.
“You don’t get forgiveness because something worse happened afterward.”
Eleanor nodded.
“I know.”
For once, no defense.
Nathan escaped.
But Sarah brought information.
Nathan was not working alone.
A woman supplied him with mansion access codes, Sarah’s schedule and the hidden corridor maps.
Nathan called her E.P.
Everyone assumed Eleanor Price.
Sarah heard the woman’s voice once.
Older.
Nathan called her:
“Mother.”
Nathan’s biological mother was supposedly Margaret Hale.
Thomas’s wife.
Still alive.
Seventy-two.
If Arthur fathered Nathan secretly, Margaret might not be biological mother either.
DNA records confirmed it.
Nathan’s birth certificate was false.
His biological mother:
Rebecca Shaw.
Victor stared at Sarah.
“No.”
Rebecca had one known pregnancy.
The child became Eleanor Shaw.
Or so she believed.
Could Rebecca have delivered twins?
Records showed a complicated birth.
One girl.
One boy.
Arthur took the boy.
Told Rebecca he died.
Gave Nathan to Thomas and Margaret.
Rebecca raised Eleanor.
Nathan and Eleanor Shaw were twins.
Arthur fathered both.
Victor’s former fiancée had been carrying his father’s children after the assault.
The truth was uglier than anyone imagined.
Victor had almost spent decades believing those children were his.
Arthur knew.
Used that uncertainty to separate them.
Nathan’s “mother” working with him could therefore mean Rebecca.
Had Rebecca joined Nathan?
Emma insisted:
“Grandma hates him.”
Maybe.
Children know pieces too.
Victor called Rebecca through the hidden speaker system.
No answer.
Sarah revealed one more thing.
Nathan repeatedly said:
“She promised Victor would bring the ledger.”
The woman knew Victor psychologically.
Knew he would follow Rebecca’s clue.
Could be Rebecca herself.
Victor’s suspicion shifted toward her.
Then Emma gave him a letter Rebecca instructed her not to open unless “the birthday went wrong.”
It had gone very wrong.
Victor opened it.
Rebecca wrote:
VICTOR,
IF NATHAN FINDS OUT I AM HIS MOTHER, HE WILL COME TO ME.
DO NOT FOLLOW HIM.
I HAVE SPENT THIRTY-FOUR YEARS WAITING FOR THE CHANCE TO FINISH WHAT ARTHUR STARTED.
Victor’s face hardened.
That sounded like revenge.
Potentially murder.
The letter continued:
NATHAN IS NOT EVIL.
HE IS ANGRY.
THERE IS A DIFFERENCE.
DO NOT LET HIM BECOME HIS GRANDFATHER JUST BECAUSE EVERYONE EXPECTS HIM TO.
Victor exhaled.
Not murder.
Rebecca wanted to reach her son.
The final line:
AND DO NOT TRUST THE WOMAN USING MY NAME.
Another identity.
Someone had been impersonating Rebecca too.
Victor asked Emma:
“Have you seen your grandmother recently?”
“Yesterday.”
“In person?”
Emma nodded.
“Where?”
“Here.”
Victor froze.
Rebecca had been inside the mansion yesterday.
“What was she wearing?”
“Red shoes.”
Everyone went still.
The red-shoe woman.
Emma had said she was taller than Helen.
Could be Rebecca.
But Rebecca’s letter warned of an impersonator.
Then Sarah asked:
“What did her voice sound like?”
Emma thought.
“She didn’t talk.”
Why would a grandmother refuse to speak to her granddaughter?
Because voice would expose the disguise.
The woman Emma saw was not Rebecca.
Someone who looked enough like her.
A relative.
Her daughter.
Eleanor Shaw.
Emma’s mother.
The missing woman.
She was alive.
And she had been inside the mansion pretending to be Rebecca.
Why?
Sarah’s blood in Eleanor’s abandoned car now looked like framing.
Eleanor Shaw may have staged her own disappearance.
Then Victor found her name in Arthur’s ledger.
ELEANOR SHAW — SUCCESSOR CANDIDATE.
The daughter Arthur created through violence.
The woman raised by Rebecca.
The mother of Emma.
Arthur had tried to recruit her into his system.
Perhaps she accepted.
Perhaps she infiltrated it.
No conclusion yet.
Then Lily tugged Sarah’s sleeve.
“Mommy?”
“Yes?”
“Why was Emma’s mommy at my party?”
Sarah stared.
“What?”
Lily had seen Eleanor Shaw earlier.
Before Victor arrived.
She described a woman standing behind the gift table.
“She told Aunt Eleanor which toys were trash.”
Eleanor Price’s face changed.
The anonymous woman who had been feeding her information was physically present.
Eleanor Shaw had directed her toward Lily’s toys.
Meaning the humiliating opening scene had not been random cruelty alone.
Eleanor Price chose to hurt Lily.
But someone intentionally aimed that cruelty at the teddy.
At the key.
At Arthur’s ledger.
Eleanor Shaw wanted the key found.
The question was no longer whether she manipulated the birthday.
May you like
She did.
The question was why she wanted Victor to uncover everything.
