Chapter 6 - The Mother Who Was Supposed to Be Dead
Eleanor did not speak for almost a full minute.
The photograph lay on the table.
Lady Beatrice Vale looked older than the portraits I had seen, but unmistakably alive.
Eleanor’s second dead woman.
Her first mother.
My mother.
The woman who raised her.
Every answer seemed to create another ghost.
“She died of pancreatic cancer,” Alexander said.
Eleanor shook her head slowly.
“I was at her funeral.”
Victoria whispered, “So was I.”
Captain Reed enlarged the traffic image.
The timestamp was forty minutes earlier.
Beatrice sat upright in the back seat.
Not kidnapped.
Not unconscious.
Looking directly toward the traffic camera.
As if she wanted to be seen.
Eleanor grabbed her coat.
“Where are they going?”
“We lost the vehicle near the northern bypass.”
“Find it.”
“We are.”
“I’m coming.”
Alexander stepped in front of her.
“You just got back.”
“I did not survive two years to sit in this palace while dead people drive around the countryside.”
No one argued.
The ledger gave us the next clue.
One entry repeated dozens of times beside Beatrice’s initials.
ST. AGNES.
An old convent school on the coast.
Closed for twenty years.
The Crown had purchased it through a shell company controlled by the Sovereign Continuity Fund.
We drove there in a convoy.
Rain hammered the windows.
Eleanor sat beside me.
For most of the journey, we said nothing.
Finally she looked over.
“Do you hate Mom?”
I knew which mother she meant.
“Our mother?”
She nodded.
“I don’t know.”
“That is exactly how I feel.”
I smiled faintly.
She studied my face.
“Do I really sneeze when I’m annoyed?”
“Apparently we both do.”
She laughed.
The sound was so similar to mine that Captain Reed glanced in the mirror.
Eleanor looked at me again.
“I imagined this conversation differently.”
“You imagined meeting me?”
“Every day.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because when I finally decided I would, I found the succession files.”
She looked down.
“Then I thought if I brought you into my life, I would bring danger with me.”
“So you protected me by staying away.”
“I thought I did.”
“That seems to be a family habit.”
She smiled sadly.
“Yes.”
St. Agnes stood above the sea like a forgotten fortress.
Broken windows.
Stone walls.
A rusted iron gate.
But inside, there were fresh tire tracks.
We entered through the chapel.
The lights were on.
Someone had been waiting.
Beatrice sat in the first pew.
Alone.
Eleanor stopped.
Her entire body trembled.
“Mother?”
Beatrice turned.
She looked at Eleanor as if seeing a miracle.
Then she stood.
“My darling.”
Eleanor crossed the aisle and slapped her.
The sound echoed through the chapel.
Beatrice did not defend herself.
“You let me bury you.”
“I know.”
“You let me stand beside a coffin and think I had no mother.”
“I know.”
“You knew I was alive after the crash?”
“Yes.”
Eleanor hit her again.
Then collapsed into her arms.
Beatrice held her.
Both women cried.
Margaret stood behind me.
I watched her face as she watched the woman who had raised the daughter she lost.
There are forms of grief that contain jealousy.
And forms of jealousy that are ashamed of themselves.
Margaret had both.
When Eleanor finally stepped away, her voice was hard.
“Talk.”
Beatrice looked at all of us.
“Malcolm is coming.”
Captain Reed raised his radio.
“Secure the perimeter.”
Beatrice shook her head.
“You won’t stop him with guards.”
Alexander stepped forward.
“Try us.”
She looked at him.
“Your father said the same thing once.”
Alexander’s face tightened.
“What did you know about Richard?”
“Too much.”
Beatrice had not died of cancer.
She had been diagnosed, but survived after experimental treatment abroad.
Malcolm used her illness to arrange a fake death.
Why?
Because Beatrice had participated in the Continuity Fund.
She was not only a recipient.
She became one of its administrators.
“I took Eleanor,” she said.
Margaret’s face went cold.
“You bought her.”
Beatrice looked at her.
“Yes.”
“Say the amount.”
“Margaret.”
“Say it.”
Beatrice swallowed.
“Two hundred thousand pounds.”
My mother’s eyes filled.
“You knew I didn’t want to give her up.”
“Yes.”
“And you took her anyway.”
“Yes.”
Eleanor looked between them.
Beatrice began crying.
“I told myself I was saving you. Malcolm said you would be taken into state care otherwise. I wanted a child more than I wanted to ask whether the story was true.”
Eleanor whispered, “So everyone saved me.”
No one spoke.
“And somehow,” she continued, “I was the one who never got a choice.”
Beatrice lowered her head.
“Yes.”
She told us that after Daniel Bennett died, she discovered the Fund’s darker purpose.
Not only secret adoptions.
Not only fertility substitutions.
It had become a private weapon used by powerful families to control succession, inheritance, and scandal.
Children were relocated.
Records changed.
DNA samples switched.
People declared dead.
People kept alive.
“I tried to leave,” Beatrice said. “Malcolm threatened Eleanor.”
“So you stayed,” I said.
“For years.”
“And when Eleanor discovered the archive?”
“I begged her to stop.”
Eleanor stared at her.
“You told me I was imagining things.”
“I was trying to frighten you away from the truth.”
“You made me think I was unstable.”
Beatrice’s face broke.
“I am sorry.”
Eleanor stepped back.
“That word is doing a lot of work in this family.”
Alexander almost smiled despite himself.
Then Beatrice gave us the final piece.
Sir Thomas Gray had worked for Sterling for fifteen years.
He became Alexander’s private secretary deliberately.
Every schedule.
Every medical appointment.
Every private conversation.
Every security weakness.
He knew.
“He helped move Eleanor after the crash,” Beatrice said.
Alexander’s fists tightened.
“He stood beside me at her funeral.”
“Yes.”
“And Oliver?”
“He took the baby to force you to exchange the ledger.”
“Why leave Oliver with Eleanor?”
Beatrice looked toward the door.
“Because Thomas is no longer loyal to Malcolm.”
We stared at her.
“What?”
“He turned against him after his wife died.”
Captain Reed frowned.
“His wife?”
“Anna Cole.”
Eleanor gasped.
The nurse whose body had been buried in her grave.
Sir Thomas Gray had been married to Anna.
Malcolm killed her.
Thomas spent two years pretending to remain loyal while secretly feeding Eleanor information.
He was the unknown sender.
He disabled the nursery cameras.
He took Oliver.
Not to hurt him.
To bring him to Eleanor.
“He wanted Alexander to find her before Malcolm did,” Beatrice said.
“Then why the threat note?” I asked.
“To make Malcolm believe the kidnapping was still part of his plan.”
A brilliant, terrible double-cross.
Alexander looked toward the chapel doors.
“So where is Thomas?”
Beatrice’s eyes filled with tears.
“He’s trying to stop Malcolm.”
A gunshot sounded outside.
Everyone moved at once.
Captain Reed pushed us behind the stone altar.
Guards shouted.
Another shot.
Then silence.
Reed spoke into his radio.
“Report.”
Static.
Then a guard’s voice.
“One suspect down. One injured.”
“Names.”
Pause.
“Sterling is alive.”
“And Gray?”
Another pause.
“Sir Thomas has been shot.”
We ran outside.
Thomas lay beside a black car in the rain.
Blood spread across his shirt.
Malcolm Sterling was on his knees twenty feet away with three weapons pointed at him.
For the first time, the most powerful man behind the Crown looked powerless.
Alexander went to Thomas.
Thomas smiled faintly.
“Sir.”
“Don’t talk.”
“I have to.”
“You don’t.”
“I do.”
Alexander pressed both hands against the wound.
Thomas looked toward Eleanor.
“I’m sorry.”
She knelt beside him.
“You helped me escape.”
“I should have done it sooner.”
“You gave me my son today.”
He smiled.
“Anna would have liked that.”
His breath shook.
Then he looked at Alexander.
“Sterling’s challenge is a distraction.”
“What?”
“He doesn’t want the throne.”
Malcolm shouted from across the courtyard.
“Thomas, shut your mouth!”
Thomas laughed weakly.
“He wants the Crown dissolved.”
Alexander stared at him.
“Why?”
Thomas looked toward Sterling.
“Because the Fund’s assets are worth billions.”
My stomach dropped.
If the monarchy collapsed under scandal, emergency clauses in the Sovereign Continuity Fund would trigger.
The assets would transfer to its private trustees.
Who controlled the trustees?
Sterling.
He did not want to become King.
He wanted to destroy the monarchy and steal everything buried beneath it.
Thomas grabbed Alexander’s sleeve.
“Don’t fight for the throne.”
Alexander leaned closer.
“What?”
“Fight for the truth.”
His eyes closed.
Captain Reed shouted for the medic.
Thomas was still breathing when they carried him away.
Malcolm Sterling looked at us from the rain.
No charm left.
No aristocratic calm.
Just hatred.
“You think this ends with me?”
Eleanor walked toward him.
“No.”
She took my hand.
“It ends with us.”
For the first time, the twin daughters Daniel Bennett had tried to protect stood together in front of the man who had broken our family.
May you like
Malcolm looked at our identical faces.
And he finally looked afraid.
