Chapter 8 - ROOM 214
The facility called her Anna Mercer.
No birth certificate.
No Social Security history before 1997.
No known relatives.
A private trust paid every bill.
The trustee?
A subsidiary linked to Victor Sloane.
I wanted to scream.
Instead, I sat in a car beside Ruiz while rain struck the windows during the drive through Maine.
Lillian came separately.
So did federal investigators now examining the financial evidence.
Alexandra lived in Room 214.
When I entered, she was sitting beside a window folding a paper napkin into smaller and smaller squares.
I had imagined this moment a hundred different ways during the drive.
She would recognize me.
She would cry.
She would explain everything.
Life rarely obeys imagination.
Alexandra looked at me politely.
“Hello.”
My throat closed.
“Hello.”
Her eyes moved to the pendant.
The napkin fell from her hands.
She stared.
“No.”
I stopped.
Her breathing changed.
“No, no, no.”
I stepped backward.
“It’s okay.”
She stood.
Her chair crashed behind her.
“Emilia?”
The name broke something in me.
I nodded without meaning to.
Alexandra covered her mouth.
Then she crossed the room.
She stopped inches away.
She did not touch me.
“May I?”
I started crying.
Not because I remembered her.
I didn’t.
I cried because she asked.
I nodded.
She touched my cheek with one trembling hand.
Right beside the stitches Eleanor had caused.
“I thought you were dead.”
“So did everyone.”
Alexandra closed her eyes.
For a long time, neither of us spoke.
Her memory came in fragments.
A hospital.
Rain.
Eleanor taking me.
Sloane arriving.
A car chase.
A crash.
Water.
Then waking somewhere unknown.
Medication.
Locked doors.
Different names.
Doctors telling her the baby had died.
Telling her Lillian wanted nothing to do with her.
Telling her Nathan’s death had been an accident.
For years, Alexandra stopped believing her own memories.
That was exactly what Eleanor had trained me to do.
Doubt myself.
Ruiz showed her a photograph of Charles.
Alexandra’s reaction was immediate.
She recoiled.
“Him.”
I stared.
“You know him?”
“He came.”
“When?”
Her hands trembled.
“After Eleanor took you.”
“What did he do?”
“He wanted money.”
A chill ran through me.
“Charles?”
Alexandra nodded.
“He said Eleanor had the baby.”
Lillian went pale.
“So Charles negotiated with Sloane.”
Alexandra looked toward her mother.
“You left me.”
Lillian’s face collapsed.
“No.”
“You sent him away.”
“Nathan?”
“Yes.”
“I was wrong.”
“You were cruel.”
Lillian began crying.
Alexandra did not comfort her.
I understood that.
Before we left, Alexandra grabbed my wrist.
“Emilia.”
I turned.
“Charles wasn’t your father.”
“I know.”
“No.”
Her eyes sharpened.
“I mean Charles never wanted to be.”
My stomach tightened.
“What are you saying?”
“He came back for you.”
“Why?”
“To give you to Victor.”
Everything inside me went still.
“But Eleanor ran.”
“Yes.”
“She protected me?”
“At first.”
Alexandra’s expression became unbearably sad.
“She loved you once.”
I almost wished she hadn’t said it.
Because hate was simple.
But knowing Eleanor had once loved me made everything afterward worse.
Then Alexandra whispered one final thing.
“There was another man helping Victor.”
“Who?”
“I never knew his name.”
“What did he look like?”
She pointed toward a framed magazine somebody had left on a table.
A recent financial publication.
Vale Meridian’s acting chairman smiled from the cover.
Marcus Vale.
Alexandra’s cousin.
May you like
She touched his face with one trembling finger.
“Him.”
