Chapter 6 - Rose Hale’s Last Secret
Rose had left Nora one final key.
It opened a storage unit containing eighteen years of notebooks, receipts, photographs, and names.
Rose had investigated the Sterlings long after she fled their mansion.
One sentence appeared repeatedly:
MARTIN WAS NOT ALONE.
Another name led Lucas and Nora to Dr. Stephen Cole.
Cole had signed Evelyn Sterling’s death certificate.
When Lucas confronted him with Evelyn’s recording, the retired physician broke.
“The crash didn’t kill her.”
Lucas felt the room tilt.
Cole explained that Evelyn already had a powerful sedative in her bloodstream before her car left Sterling Mansion.
“She couldn’t have driven normally.”
“Who drugged her?” Nora asked.
Cole looked away.
“Martin Blackwood.”
Lucas’s jaw tightened.
“Then why did you call it a traffic accident?”
Cole’s eyes filled with shame.
“Your father paid me.”
Silence.
Harrison had always insisted he never murdered Evelyn.
Maybe that was technically true.
But he had paid a doctor to hide how she really died.
Lucas suddenly understood the horror.
His mother’s death had not simply been concealed.
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It had been converted into a story.
And Harrison Sterling had helped write every word of it.
