Chapter 4 - The Girl Behind the Wall
Victoria ran.
For the first time that night, her calm disappeared completely.
She reached the locked door and pulled desperately at the handle.
“Emma!”
No answer.
Julian looked at her.
“You knew she could be here?”
“No.”
“Then why are you acting like you did?”
Victoria turned.
“Because Raymond promised me she was dead.”
Julian shouted:
“My father promised you?”
Victoria began crying.
Not beautifully.
Not strategically.
Years of control collapsed at once.
Raymond told her Emma died during a failed relocation.
He gave her a death certificate.
A photograph.
Even a small bracelet Victoria recognized.
She believed him.
Then he offered her something else.
Access to records connected to the children.
If she entered his family and stayed quiet.
Why?
Because he needed someone with a reason to protect the secret.
A grieving mother.
Someone too compromised to speak.
“You helped him?”
“I told myself I was finding the truth.”
“You hid children beneath our funeral home.”
“I kept them alive.”
I wanted to hate her cleanly.
But nothing was clean anymore.
The children had been brought there gradually after Raymond died.
Not by him.
By someone continuing his system.
Victoria claimed she hid them there because the alternative was worse.
“Who brought them?”
“I don’t know his real name.”
“Convenient.”
“He calls himself Dr. Vale.”
The surname.
Mrs. Vale.
Victoria had been forced to use it in communication with him.
Not her birth name.
A code identity.
Then Chloe whispered:
“He wears Daddy’s watch.”
Julian looked at his wrist.
His expensive black watch.
A family heirloom from Raymond.
“What?”
Chloe pointed at it.
“The bad doctor has one too.”
Julian’s face changed.
There were only two such watches.
Raymond commissioned them years earlier.
One for Julian.
One for Julian’s younger brother, Nicholas.
Nicholas disappeared eighteen years ago at age sixteen.
Their father claimed he ran away.
No body.
No confirmed sightings.
Julian whispered:
“No.”
Victoria looked at him.
“You never told me you had a brother.”
“You never told me you had a daughter.”
Fair.
Then the locked door clicked.
Everyone froze.
It opened inward.
A teenage girl stood there.
Thin.
Pale.
Dark hair.
Maybe seventeen.
Victoria’s knees gave out.
“Emma?”
The girl stared at her.
No recognition.
Then she looked at Julian.
And said:
“Dad?”
Julian stopped breathing.
Victoria turned toward him.
May you like
Slowly.
“Why did she call you that?”
