Chapter 4
The original council footage still existed.
That surprised Vivienne.
It surprised Tristan more.
My security archives retained unmarked backups of every private meeting held at the lake house. Nobody accessed them because almost nobody remembered they existed.
I remembered because my father trusted recordings more than people.
For once, one of his habits became useful.
Thomas, my security chief, found the file.
We watched it in the ballroom study.
I was twenty-nine.
Angrier.
More impatient.
Sitting at the long lake-house table while three capos argued about an unrelated associate who had been leaking schedules.
At one point I said:
“She’s become a problem.”
Different person.
Different conversation.
Vivienne had cut the sentence into the video Elena saw.
Then another clip.
“I won’t let one person threaten this family.”
Another subject.
Another lie.
Stitched together.
Elena stared at the screen.
I could not look at her.
Three years.
She had carried that manufactured version of me through pregnancy, childbirth, fear, and raising twins—
No.
One child.
I stopped.
“Isla is mine.”
Elena looked at me.
“Yes.”
“Then why did she call herself your daughter and not say anything about—”
I stopped again.
I had assumed.
The prompt of my own hope had filled blanks faster than truth.
Elena understood.
“There were twins.”
My chest went cold.
Nobody moved.
“What?”
Her eyes filled.
“Isla had a brother.”
Vivienne closed her eyes.
Tristan looked at the floor.
I could not breathe properly.
“Had?”
Elena looked toward my aunt.
“She told me he died.”
I turned slowly.
Vivienne’s face had gone gray.
Elena continued.
“Two days after they were born, I was told my son stopped breathing during the night.”
I looked at Tristan.
His hands were shaking.
“No.”
He whispered it.
Not disagreement.
Recognition.
Elena stared at him.
“What?”
Tristan looked at his mother.
Then at me.
“The boy didn’t die.”
Everything inside me stopped.
Vivienne moved toward him.
I stepped between them.
“Elena’s son was alive?”
Tristan nodded.
She made a sound behind me that I will hear until I die.
I looked at Vivienne.
“You took my son.”
She stared back.
And this time she did not deny it.
May you like
She said something worse.
“I saved the heir.”
