Chapter 6 - Why Lily Was Chosen
Victor pulled the car beneath an abandoned overpass.
Rain struck the windshield.
The convent stood less than ten minutes away.
But Victor had stopped.
“Who hired you?”
Lily tried to breathe.
“A woman from Blackwood Family Services.”
“Name.”
“Claire Dawson.”
Victor took out a secure phone.
He searched the name.
No employee record appeared.
“Describe her.”
“Brown hair.”
“Gray coat.”
“She said Ethan needed someone experienced with trauma.”
Victor looked at Lily.
“What trauma?”
“She said his mother had died.”
“That he woke crying every night.”
“She knew everything about him.”
Victor’s gaze became harder.
“What did she know about you?”
Lily looked down.
“My younger brother died when he was two.”
Victor waited.
“He fell down the stairs while my mother was working.”
“I was fourteen.”
“You were blamed.”
Lily nodded.
“The investigation cleared me.”
“But my stepfather never did.”
Victor understood before she finished.
“Serena chose a nanny with a dead child in her past.”
“She needed someone easy to frame.”
Lily’s eyes burned.
“She knew.”
“She knew exactly which wound to use.”
Victor called one of his investigators.
“Find everything on Claire Dawson.”
A reply came thirty seconds later.
No woman by that name existed.
But the employment forms contained a fingerprint.
It belonged to Serena’s former assistant.
The assistant had died in an apparent overdose four months earlier.
Lily closed her eyes.
“Everyone who knows something disappears.”
Victor started the engine.
“Not everyone.”
They reached St. Augustine as the first light of dawn touched the sky.
The convent had been abandoned for years.
Broken statues lined the courtyard.
The blue angel window glowed faintly inside the chapel.
Victor parked behind a stone wall.
He handed Lily a small earpiece.
“Stay close.”
They entered through a side door.
The chapel smelled of dust and rain.
A soft mechanical melody echoed through the darkness.
Ethan’s silver music box.
Lily moved toward the sound.
Victor grabbed her arm.
A thin wire stretched across the aisle.
He followed it to an explosive device beneath a pew.
“It is a trap.”
Ethan cried somewhere upstairs.
Lily’s face tightened.
“He is here.”
Victor cut the trigger wire.
They climbed the narrow staircase.
At the top, they found Ethan’s blanket.
Blood stained one corner.
Lily picked it up with shaking hands.
“Ethan.”
A door slammed below.
Victor turned.
Men entered the chapel.
Damon’s voice echoed through the building.
“Come out, Victor.”
“We both know you will not risk the child.”
Victor pulled Lily into the archive room.
Metal shelves filled the space.
Old church records covered the walls.
Victor searched for another exit.
Lily heard the music box again.
Not upstairs.
Inside the wall.
She moved a stack of files.
A narrow wooden panel appeared behind them.
Victor opened it.
A hidden staircase descended beneath the convent.
They followed the melody underground.
At the bottom was a small room.
The silver music box sat on a table.
Ethan was not there.
Lily rushed toward it.
Victor stopped her.
“Do not touch it.”
The lid opened by itself.
Elena’s voice filled the room.
“If you are hearing this, I did not survive.”
Victor froze.
The recording continued.
“Damon believes he is Gabriel Blackwood’s son.”
“He is not.”
Victor looked at Lily.
“Serena forged the test.”
Elena’s voice trembled.
“She needed Damon angry enough to betray Victor.”
“She promised him a family that was never his.”
Footsteps sounded above them.
Elena continued.
“The real records are hidden beneath the chapel altar.”
“But the greatest danger is not Damon.”
“It is Serena.”
“She has done this before.”
“She finds wealthy families.”
“She enters through grief.”
“She creates an heir she can control.”
Lily’s stomach turned.
“Creates?”
Victor stared at the music box.
Elena’s recording answered.
“Serena arranged Ethan’s adoption.”
Lily looked at Victor.
Victor did not breathe.
Ethan had always been presented as Elena and Victor’s biological son.
The recording continued.
“I discovered the hospital records.”
“Ethan is not our biological child.”
“But Victor loves him.”
“And that makes him our son.”
Victor’s eyes closed for one brief second.
“Elena,” he whispered.
“She planned to use his unknown identity to challenge his inheritance.”
“Then replace him with a child of her own.”
The recording crackled.
A final sentence began.
“Ethan’s biological mother is—”
The sound stopped.
A gunshot shattered the music box.
Damon stood at the entrance to the hidden room.
Smoke curled from his weapon.
Serena stood beside him.
And Ethan was in her arms.
His face was pale.
A syringe was taped against his injured arm.
Serena smiled.
“You should have stayed dead, Victor.”
Victor raised his weapon.
Damon pressed his gun against Ethan’s head.
“Drop it.”
Victor lowered the weapon.
Serena looked at Lily.
“You were always so obedient.”
“Until you started believing you mattered.”
Lily stared at Ethan.
His eyes fluttered when he heard her voice.
“Ethan.”
Serena tightened her hold.
“Do not call him that.”
Lily looked at her.
“Why?”
Serena’s smile became thin.
“Because that was never his name.”
Then she leaned close to the baby’s ear.
“Was it, Noah?”
Lily stopped breathing.
May you like
Noah had been the name of her little brother.
The child she had believed died sixteen years earlier.
