Chapter 8
Victor Vance was supposed to be dead.
A private plane crash.
No body recovered.
A memorial service full of white roses and men who spoke in careful sentences.
That was what Sarah found within an hour.
Dad said Victor had always preferred vanishing to losing.
Detective Ellis dug deeper.
Victor’s companies still moved money through shell accounts.
One account had paid Marcus’s law firm.
Another paid the doctor who prepared false mental health affidavits against me.
A third had recently rented a storage unit three miles from the hospital.
Police got a warrant.
Dad insisted on going.
Sarah insisted I stay.
I hated staying.
I hated the bed.
The stitches.
The weakness.
The fact that Marcus had wrapped violence around my throat and made me afraid to let my daughter out of sight.
But I stayed because Lily needed me breathing.
Dad video-called from the storage facility.
The unit door rolled up.
Inside were boxes.
Old case files.
My mother’s diary.
And photographs of me.
As a child.
As a teenager.
At college.
At my wedding.
Pregnant.
Leaving doctor appointments.
I gripped Lily so tightly she stirred.
Sarah whispered, “Emily.”
“They watched me my whole life.”
Dad picked up a folder labeled LANE GIRL.
His face drained.
“What?”
He opened it.
Inside was a birth certificate.
Mine.
Then another document.
An adoption petition.
I stared at the screen.
“No.”
Sarah leaned closer.
The petition listed Rebecca Lane as mother.
Father unknown.
Then a handwritten note from Victor Vance:
If the child is mine, remove her quietly.
The room disappeared.
Dad whispered, “Emily, listen to me.”
But I could not hear him.
May you like
Because the Vances had not only killed my mother.
They had spent my entire life wondering whether I belonged to them.
