Chapter 9 - THE PRICE OF TWO SISTERSClara stared at the photo until the edges of the world blurred.
Nora was alive.
That was the miracle.
Nora was tied to a chair.
That was the nightmare.
Eleanor reached for the phone with trembling hands.
“Is she breathing?”
Clara enlarged the image. Nora’s chest rose faintly beneath her gray sweater.
“Yes.”
Andrew turned to Detective Morales.
“Can you trace it?”
Morales was already moving.
“We’ll try. Don’t reply.”
Clara looked at the message again.
Bring Victoria.
Not money.
Not documents.
Victoria.
“Why do they want her?” Clara whispered.
Eleanor’s face was pale.
“Because she knows something.”
Andrew’s jaw tightened.
“Or because she has something.”
Clara remembered the empty files in the cabinet. The broken lock. Victoria’s fear when the phone rang.
“She took the records,” Clara said.
No one denied it.
Morales ordered officers to place protective detail on the Whitmore estate. But when they called the mansion, the security chief sounded panicked.
Victoria was gone.
Eleanor closed her eyes.
“No.”
Andrew grabbed his coat.
“She ran.”
Clara shook her head.
“She’s scared.”
“She helped them find you.”
“She’s still my sister.”
The words surprised everyone, including Clara.
Eleanor looked at her with something like wonder and pain.
Clara did not soften.
“That doesn’t mean I forgive her.”
They drove back through the city as dawn threatened the sky.
At the mansion, chaos waited.
Victoria’s bedroom was open. Her closet drawers were scattered. Jewelry missing. Passport gone.
But on the vanity, beneath a crystal perfume bottle, was a note.
Andrew picked it up.
His face changed.
“What is it?” Eleanor asked.
He read aloud.
I know where Henry keeps the original file. If I bring it back, maybe Mother will remember I was her daughter first.
Eleanor pressed both hands to her mouth.
Clara looked at the words.
There was jealousy in them.
And fear.
But also desperation.
Victoria had not run away to save herself.
She had run toward the one man who had destroyed them all.
Detective Morales entered the room.
“We found a car leaving the estate at 2:18 a.m. Registered to Victoria. Traffic cameras picked her up heading east.”
“Toward what?” Andrew asked.
Morales looked at Clara.
“St. Agnes Hospital.”
Eleanor staggered.
“The old maternity wing?”
Morales nodded.
“It’s been abandoned for fifteen years.”
Clara remembered the message.
Bring Victoria by dawn.
Victoria was bringing herself.
Andrew cursed.
“She’s walking into a trap.”
Clara headed for the door.
Eleanor grabbed her arm.
“No.”
Clara turned.
“My mother is there.”
Eleanor’s eyes glistened.
“So is my daughter.”
For one second, they stood facing each other—two women tied together by blood, loss, and different meanings of the same word.
Mother.
Then Eleanor released her.
“I’m coming.”
Andrew stepped in front of them.
“We do this with police.”
Morales nodded.
“No one goes in alone.”
But Clara knew something they did not.
She knew Nora.
If Nora had written “do not trust your sister,” it was not only a warning.
It was a clue.
Clara looked down at the photo again.
Behind Nora’s chair, barely visible, was a wall.
Peeling blue paint.
A faded mural of white birds.
Clara had seen that wall before.
Not in St. Agnes Hospital.
In the orphanage basement where she had spent the first four years of her life.
May you like
Victoria was going to the wrong place.
And dawn was only forty minutes away.
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