Chapter 6 - THE MOTHER WHO REMEMBERED
I caught Elena before her head struck the floor.
"Mom! Please, look at me!"
Blood spread across the sleeve of her gray dress. She was alive, but her breathing came in short, frightened gasps.
Adrian's men rushed down the stairs while he returned fire toward the cellar entrance. Gabriel's voice disappeared into the house, followed by the sound of a door slamming.
"Get a medic here!" Adrian shouted.
One of his guards pressed a clean cloth against Elena's wound. Another secured the cellar entrance.
I held my mother's hand.
"Don't leave me again."
Her eyes opened slowly.
"I never wanted to."
The words broke something inside me.
For seven years, I had imagined my mother as a woman who had died before I could remember her. Now she lay in my arms, thinner and older than the photograph, but unmistakably real.
"Where is Vanessa?" I asked.
Elena's face tightened.
"With Gabriel."
"Why did he take her?"
"Because he knows what she is."
"My sister?"
Elena nodded weakly.
"He took both of you from me. You were the one he couldn't control, so he sent you away. Vanessa stayed close to him. He told her I had abandoned her, that Adrian had chosen power over his family, and that I was the reason her life had been stolen."
I looked toward Adrian.
He stood beside the staircase, his pistol lowered, his face stripped of its usual coldness.
"Why didn't you contact me?" he asked.
Elena's eyes filled with tears.
"I tried. Gabriel intercepted every message. The first time I escaped the clinic, his men found me before I reached Manhattan. The second time, they threatened to kill the girls."
"Who helped you hide?"
"Margaret. She was the nurse who carried Isabella away from the hospital. She thought she was saving her from a kidnapping. When she learned what Gabriel had done, she took Isabella and disappeared."
"Why didn't she tell me?"
"She believed you were being watched. She was afraid that if you knew Isabella was alive, Gabriel would kill you both."
I remembered Margaret's hands trembling whenever the telephone rang.
All those years, she had been afraid.
I squeezed Elena's fingers.
"Where have you been?"
"In a private clinic. Gabriel kept me under another name, claiming I was unstable and dangerous. When I escaped six months ago, I came here. I wanted to find you before he did."
Adrian knelt beside us.
"Elena, I am sorry."
She looked at him for a long time.
"You should be."
He accepted the words without defending himself.
"I should have trusted you. I should have investigated. I let my fear of losing control become more important than finding you."
Her fingers moved toward his cheek.
"I loved you, Adrian. But love cannot make a man choose the right thing. He has to choose it himself."
He bowed his head.
For the first time, I saw him cry.
The medic arrived and stabilized Elena. Her injury was serious but treatable, and the team prepared to transport her to a secure hospital.
Before they lifted her onto the stretcher, she caught my wrist.
"Listen carefully. Gabriel is not acting alone."
I leaned closer.
"Who else is involved?"
"Someone in the organization has been funding him for years. Someone who wanted Adrian to remain at the top because a war would make them rich."
"Who?"
Elena's eyes flicked toward the stairs.
"I don't know his real name. Gabriel calls him the Architect."
Adrian's expression hardened.
The Architect was a name he recognized. Years earlier, several rival families had used it to describe the unseen strategist behind a series of assassinations and financial takeovers. Adrian had believed the man was a myth.
Elena continued.
"He arranged the false death certificate. He financed the auction. He wants Isabella and Vanessa because the Blackwood inheritance is tied to a document neither daughter has seen."
"What document?" Adrian asked.
"The original family trust. Your father created it before he died. If both daughters are confirmed alive, the controlling shares of Blackwood Holdings transfer out of Gabriel's reach."
Adrian stared at her.
"My father never told me that."
"He was afraid of what Gabriel would become."
A phone began vibrating in Adrian's pocket.
The message came from an unknown number.
It contained a photograph of Vanessa tied to a chair in a dark room.
Beneath it were six words.
Bring Isabella. Come without your men.
Then another message arrived.
You have one hour.
I looked at my mother.
Elena tried to rise, but the medic held her down.
"No," she whispered. "He wants you to surrender."
"I won't let him kill Vanessa."
"He may already have decided to."
I turned toward Adrian.
"We're going."
He shook his head.
"Not without a plan."
I looked again at the photograph. Vanessa's face was bruised, but her eyes were open. She looked terrified.
She had tried to kill me.
Yet she was still my sister.
"Then make a plan," I said. "But we're not leaving her there."
Adrian called his security chief and began issuing quiet orders. He arranged a decoy convoy, an emergency medical team, and surveillance on every road leading out of the estate.
As we prepared to leave, Elena grabbed my hand one last time.
"Isabella, there's something else."
"What?"
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"The man who helped Gabriel steal you from the hospital wasn't his employee."
She looked at Adrian.
"He was your father's closest friend."
Adrian froze.
Elena swallowed.
"His name was Thomas Blackwood."
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Adrian's father had been dead for twelve years.
And according to the records, Thomas Blackwood had died with him.
