Chapter 13 - The Hidden AccountThe question haunted me all night.
How had Eleanor known?
Not guessed.
Known.
Sarah saved you.
Those words were too specific.
I called Marcus before dawn.
“Check every device in the house.”
By noon, his team found three hidden recording devices.
One in my office.
One in the library.
One in Maya’s old bedroom.
The third made me physically sick.
Eleanor had been listening to my daughter.
Her nightmares.
Her prayers.
Her whispers to Sarah’s photograph.
Marcus placed the devices in evidence bags.
“There’s something else,” he said.
He handed me a report.
Eleanor had opened a private account six months earlier under the name E. Hartwell Sterling. Deposits had been made from vendors connected to the house renovation.
Inflated invoices.
Fake design purchases.
Consulting fees.
She had stolen from me.
That did not surprise me.
Then I saw the final page.
A payment to a private boarding academy in Switzerland.
Reservation deposit.
For Maya Sterling.
My vision narrowed.
“She was trying to send Maya away.”
Daniel read the document twice.
“Without your consent, she couldn’t complete enrollment. But she was preparing.”
I thought of Maya asking if everyone would hate her.
I thought of Eleanor telling her she was leftover.
It had all been preparation.
Make the child small.
Make her silent.
Make her seem troubled.
Then remove her.
I walked upstairs and found Maya painting at the small desk we had moved into my office. For the first time in days, there was color on the page.
A house.
A girl.
A woman with golden hair in the sky.
And a man standing in front of a locked door.
“Is that me?” I asked softly.
Maya nodded.
“You’re guarding it.”
I knelt beside her.
“From what?”
She dipped her brush into blue paint.
“From the people who pretend they love you.”
I had no answer.
May you like
Only a promise forming in my bones.
Eleanor would never get near her again.
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