Chapter 6 - THE PRICE OF AN INFANTThomas demanded that the screen be turned off.
Lena refused.
The live signal could not be traced. Harrison’s image passed through multiple encrypted servers, but the background showed highway lights moving across the rear window.
“Your father received three million dollars six days after Chloe’s birth,” Harrison said.
Thomas shouted from the medical bed.
“It was not payment for the baby!”
“What was it?” Sarah asked.
No answer came.
Harrison supplied one.
“The money purchased Thomas’s silence and funded a new identity for Elena.”
Sarah gripped the edge of the desk.
“Did my mother take the child?”
“Yes.”
“Was she alive?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know?”
Harrison looked directly into the camera.
“I learned the truth eleven months ago.”
Sarah felt the betrayal before he finished.
“You had eleven months.”
“I tried to reach the child first.”
“You did not call me.”
“Every phone connected to you was monitored.”
“You mailed a filthy doll to our five-year-old.”
“Because Chloe was the only person Victoria’s security would not search.”
Victoria stepped toward the Rose House monitor.
“You used a child to move evidence.”
Harrison’s expression hardened.
“You kept me chained beneath your house.”
“You stole from me.”
“I stole from your father.”
“You slept in my bed while planning it.”
Sarah looked between them.
The affair had been real.
The conspiracy had been real too.
Harrison continued before either woman could speak again.
“The second child is named Lily Shaw. She has lived under six identities.”
A photograph appeared.
A five-year-old girl stood beside a white fence wearing a yellow dress.
She looked almost exactly like Chloe.
Same eyes.
Same small dimple near the left corner of her mouth.
Sarah covered her face.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know anymore.”
He had located Lily inside a Vale House residence in Northern California. Before he could arrange a rescue, Elena moved her.
“Why would my mother keep running?”
“Because she no longer knows which side intends to save Lily and which side intends to use her.”
“What use could anyone have for a child?”
Harrison looked toward Thomas.
Thomas turned away.
The Miller twins were legal heirs to a hidden restitution account created from stolen guardianship money. Elena had linked access to both girls’ biometric identities, believing that no adult should control the fund alone.
The account held more than money.
It contained the original names of hundreds of people Vale House had declared dead.
Marcus wanted it erased.
Victoria wanted it to remove her father.
Thomas wanted it to negotiate immunity.
Harrison claimed he wanted to return the money and identities to the victims.
Sarah no longer accepted anyone’s declared motive without evidence.
“Who is driving you?” she asked.
The woman beside Harrison lifted one hand.
A silver wedding ring flashed beneath the dashboard light.
Sarah recognized it from childhood photographs.
Her mother’s ring.
Harrison looked toward the driver.
“Elena says she will exchange Lily for the doll’s chip.”
Sarah stared at Chloe, who slept in the adjoining room beneath police protection.
“What does the chip unlock?”
“The original family file.”
“Where?”
“Inside Vale House headquarters.”
Victoria stepped closer.
“My father’s building has no family archive.”
“Yes, it does,” Harrison said. “It is hidden beneath your mother’s memorial room.”
Victoria went pale.
Her mother, Caroline Vale, had supposedly died in a sailing accident when Victoria was eight.
Another woman erased by the network.
Harrison’s feed shook.
He looked behind him.
“We have company.”
A black SUV appeared through the rear window.
Elena accelerated.
Before the video cut, Harrison shouted one final sentence.
May you like
“Sarah, Lily was not the only infant taken that night!”
👉 The twin’s photograph proved Chloe had a living sister, while Harrison’s final warning suggested a third baby was hidden in the same birth records.
