Chapter 7 - The Woman Who Never Died
Her name was Rebecca Sloane.
Celeste had been told Rebecca died of an overdose when Celeste was eleven.
The ledger said otherwise.
Rebecca had received monthly payments for nineteen years.
The latest had cleared six days earlier.
Celeste sat down hard.
“My mother is alive?”
Victor remembered the nightmares Celeste had suffered as a teenager.
A woman screaming.
A locked basement.
A silver bracelet.
Victor had assumed they were fragments of childhood trauma.
Now he wondered whether they were memories someone had worked very hard to bury.
The ledger included a property code.
Reed recognized it.
“A federal witness-protection facility?”
“No,” Victor said. “Look again.”
The code belonged to a private psychiatric institution in rural Pennsylvania owned through four shell companies.
One eventually traced back to Nora Crane.
Celeste’s expression hardened.
“I’m going.”
Victor answered immediately.
“So am I.”
“You can barely stand.”
“And you’ve demonstrated what happens when I leave you unsupervised.”
For the first time, something almost human crossed Celeste’s face.
Not forgiveness.
Memory.
Hours later, federal agents quietly entered the institution.
Room 314 contained an elderly-looking woman sitting beside a window.
She was only fifty-seven.
Years of medication had aged her.
Celeste stopped at the doorway.
The woman turned.
Her cup slipped from her fingers.
“Cece?”
Celeste broke.
Victor had never heard his daughter make that sound.
She crossed the room and fell to her knees.
Rebecca touched her face.
“They told me you died.”
Celeste stared at her.
“They told me you did.”
Rebecca looked toward Victor.
Then terror entered her eyes.
“Victor Vale.”
“You know me?”
Rebecca nodded.
“I chose you.”
The room went silent.
Twenty years earlier, Rebecca had discovered that Nora Crane and several partners were using vulnerable children as leverage in financial crimes. When Rebecca tried to escape with Celeste, Nora threatened them both.
Rebecca made one desperate decision.
She arranged for Celeste to be abandoned where Victor would find her.
“Why me?”
“Because you were the only rich man in Baltimore whose background investigators couldn’t find a secret to blackmail.”
Victor almost smiled at the bleak compliment.
Rebecca had believed Celeste would be safe.
She had never expected Nora to find her again through Julian.
Celeste whispered, “Did Julian know?”
Rebecca’s eyes filled.
“He knew before he met you.”
Celeste stood abruptly.
The marriage.
The romance.
The chance meeting at a charity gala.
All of it had been engineered.
Then Rebecca grabbed Victor’s sleeve.
“There’s something worse.”
“What?”
“Nora didn’t spend twenty years trying to steal your company.”
Victor frowned.
“What did she want?”
Rebecca looked toward the federal agents.
“Something buried inside it.”
Before she could explain, every light in the facility went out.
Emergency alarms screamed.
And from the darkness came a familiar male voice.
May you like
“Mother?”
Julian Crane was inside the building.
