Chapter 4 - The Woman in the Photograph
Rebecca's car never reached the gate.
Victor's men stopped it halfway down the estate road.
But when they opened the door, Rebecca wasn't inside.
Only her handbag lay on the back seat.
James watched the security footage twice.
At 8:31, the sedan left the garage.
At 8:33, it passed the fountain.
At no point did Rebecca visibly exit.
“She knew the blind spots,” Victor said.
James looked at him.
“Which means?”
“Either she's been planning this for years, or someone in security helped her.”
James inserted Evelyn's flash drive into an isolated laptop.
One folder appeared.
MOONLIGHT.
Password protected.
Luna wandered into the study wearing clean clothes. The transformation was painful. Beneath the dirt and oversized rags had been a beautiful little girl with long dark hair and James's unmistakable eyes.
She looked more like the child in the gate photograph now.
She also looked frighteningly like someone else.
Evelyn.
James glanced at the password field.
“What did your mother call me?”
Luna considered.
“James.”
“Anything else?”
She smiled faintly.
“Mr. Grumpy.”
Victor coughed to hide a laugh.
James gave him a look.
“Useful.”
Luna climbed onto a chair.
“Sometimes Moon Man.”
James entered MOONMAN.
Incorrect.
“What did I call her?”
Luna shrugged.
Then she looked at the crescent pendant.
“Mommy said you called her your north star.”
NORTHSTAR.
The folder opened.
Victor's amusement disappeared.
Inside were dozens of documents.
Bank records.
Medical reports.
Photographs.
Audio files.
And videos.
James opened the earliest recording.
Evelyn appeared.
Alive.
His breath stopped.
She sat in a dim apartment, thinner than in the wedding photograph but unmistakably the same woman.
“If you're watching this, James, then one of two things happened. Either I finally found a way back to you…”
She paused.
“…or I didn't.”
James couldn't move.
“You didn't abandon me. I need you to know that first.”
His eyes burned.
“After the crash, Rebecca told me you were dead. Three days later, someone broke into our apartment. I was pregnant. Victor had disappeared. Your organization was under lockdown. I ran.”
Victor whispered, “My God.”
Evelyn continued.
“Months later, I learned you survived. I tried contacting you. Every message came back. Every person I trusted disappeared or suddenly refused to speak to me.”
James glanced toward Victor.
“I never knew.”
“I believe you.”
The recording continued.
“Rebecca wasn't working alone.”
James leaned forward.
“There was someone inside your organization. Someone powerful enough to rewrite hospital records, intercept calls and erase our marriage.”
Evelyn held up a document.
“Our ceremony was legal. The certificate was destroyed from the county system, but I kept a certified copy.”
James closed his eyes.
He had been married.
Luna watched silently.
Then Evelyn said something worse.
“The crash happened because someone wanted you to forget what you discovered.”
James paused the video.
“What did I discover?”
Victor opened another folder.
Financial records showed millions moving through shell companies.
One name repeated.
Calder Holdings.
Victor went pale.
“What?”
“I know that company.”
“Who owns it?”
Victor stared at James.
“Your uncle.”
Richard Thornton.
The man who had raised James after his father's death.
The man who had taught him how to control the organization.
The man James had trusted with everything.
James opened the final video.
Evelyn was visibly sick.
Luna appeared asleep behind her, younger, curled beneath a blanket.
“If I don't survive, Luna has instructions. But James…”
Evelyn looked directly into the camera.
“There is something about the crash I never told our daughter.”
A noise sounded behind her.
She turned.
The video ended.
James tried the next file.
Corrupted.
Then Victor's phone rang.
He answered.
His expression changed.
“What?”
He put it on speaker.
A guard spoke.
“Sir, Richard Thornton is at the gate.”
James stared toward the windows.
“He says he heard about the child.”
A moment later another security feed appeared.
Richard stood outside beside a black sedan.
Seventy years old.
Silver-haired.
Elegant.
Smiling.
Luna entered the room, saw the monitor—
and screamed.
She dropped her bear.
James grabbed her before she could run.
“Luna!”
She buried her face against him.
“That's him!”
James stared at his uncle.
“The man from your mother's photograph?”
Luna shook violently.
“No.”
May you like
Her next words turned James's blood to ice.
“That's the man Mommy said killed you.”
