Chapter 3 - The Fleeing Uncle and the Redialed Truth
The estate’s surveillance control room was located beneath the main carriage house, behind a reinforced steel door that required both a keycard and a fingerprint scan.
Lucas did not allow Emily to return to her quarters.
Instead, he marched her down the service stairs, his hand clamped firmly around her upper arm—not to restrain her, but as if he expected someone to snatch her from the hallways at any second.
Noah walked between them, clutching the blue inhaler in one hand and the silver photograph frame in the other.
Inside the surveillance room, banks of high-definition monitors illuminated the faces of three security guards who immediately stood at attention as Lucas entered.
"Pull the main entrance feed from fifteen forty-five to sixteen fifteen," Lucas commanded, gesturing toward the central video wall.
The chief technician typed rapidly, and the massive center screen divided into four high-angle perspectives of the grand limestone foyer.
The timestamp read 15:58.
On screen, the heavy oak service door swung open.
Emily walked into the frame wearing a wet raincoat, shaking an umbrella and carrying a worn canvas tote bag over her shoulder.
She paused near the entrance table, wiped her boots on the mat, and greeted the head housekeeper before turning toward the staff corridor.
At that exact moment, on the opposite side of the grand foyer, an older man stepped out from the private dining room.
Victor DeLuca was fifty-eight years old, sporting silver-streaked hair, an expensive tailored wool overcoat, and a gold signet ring on his pinky.
In the footage, Victor was holding a crystal tumbler of whiskey.
He glanced casually across the marble floor toward the service door.
Then, he stopped dead in his tracks.
The high-resolution camera captured the exact micro-second Victor's face drained of every drop of color.
His jaw dropped slack, his eyes bulged in pure, unadulterated terror, and his fingers loosened completely.
The crystal tumbler slipped from his grip, shattering violently across the black marble tiles, splashing amber liquid over his polished leather shoes.
He didn't look down at the broken glass.
He didn't apologize to the startled housekeeper who rushed toward him with a towel.
He simply stared at Emily's retreating back with the horrified expression of a man who had just seen a ghost crawl out of an open grave.
In the next camera angle, Victor whipped out a silver flip phone, spun on his heel, and practically sprinted down the private corridor toward the garage.
Lucas leaned over the console, his jaw clenched tight enough to crack teeth.
"Isolate the audio from the foyer's ambient directional microphone at sixteen hundred hours," Lucas ordered.
The technician adjusted the acoustic equalizer, filtering out the ambient hum of the ventilation and the sound of falling rain.
The audio spiked as Victor raised the phone to his ear, his breathing ragged and chaotic through the speakers.
"Answer the damn phone, Marcus!" Victor's voice hissed through the speakers, trembling with raw panic.
A muffled click sounded from the other end.
"Marcus... she’s here," Victor whispered, his voice cracking on the syllables.
"I don’t know how, but she found her way back."
The recording ended abruptly as Victor exited the microphone's range.
Emily felt the blood rush to her ears, a high-pitched ringing drowning out the mechanical hum of the server racks.
"He knows me," she whispered, her voice barely carrying across the room.
"He doesn't know you as Emily Carter," Lucas said, turning toward her, his face grim.
"He knows you as the four-year-old child he thought he erased from this earth twenty-one years ago."
"This is crazy," Emily muttered, shaking her head violently, backing toward the steel door.
"I have a mother! I grew up in South Philadelphia! I had childhood chickenpox, I have school report cards, I have a birth certificate from St. Agnes Hospital!"
"Then call her," Lucas challenged, pointing toward her pocket.
"Call the woman who raised you right now, put her on speaker, and ask her the truth."
Emily stared at him, her chest heaving.
She reached into her apron pocket with shaking fingers, pulled out her cracked smartphone, and unlocked the screen.
Her mother’s contact was at the very top of her favorites list: Mom.
She tapped the call button.
The line rang once.
Twice.
Three times.
Four times.
It clicked over to the automated voicemail greeting: You’ve reached Martha, please leave a message.
Emily hung up, her pulse racing.
She quickly typed a text message, her thumbs trembling over the digital keys:
Mom, please answer. Were you ever in Rhode Island? Was I adopted?
She hit send.
Three small grey dots appeared immediately on the screen, indicating Martha was typing.
The dots danced for five agonizing seconds.
Then they disappeared.
No reply came.
Lucas watched her intently, the tension in the room thickening like setting concrete.
"Ask her the real question, Emily," Lucas urged quietly.
"Ask her the name."
Emily swallowed the dry lump in her throat.
Her fingers felt numb, but she forced them to move across the glass:
Mom, who is Isabella DeLuca?
She hit send.
Less than two seconds later, Emily's phone erupted into loud, frantic vibrations.
Incoming call: Mom.
Emily’s breath hitched in her throat.
Lucas stepped closer, gesturing for her to answer.
With trembling hands, Emily slid the green icon across the screen and tapped the speaker button.
"Mom?" Emily’s voice broke into a desperate whisper.
There was no greeting from the other end.
Only the sound of rapid, ragged hyperventilation and a woman sobbing in terror.
"Where are you, Emily?" Martha’s voice came through the speaker, breathless, frantic, and cracked with pure grief.
"Where are you right now?"
"I'm at work, Mom," Emily replied, tears finally spilling down her cheeks.
"At the estate in Newport."
"Get out of there!" Martha shrieked over the phone, the raw panic in her voice making the security guards flinch.
"Get in your car and drive! Leave your belongings, leave everything, just get out of that house right now!"
Emily gripped the phone until her knuckles turned white.
"Why, Mom? Why do I have to leave?"
"Please, baby, listen to me just once," Martha sobbed hysterically.
"If they realize who you are, they will never let you leave that property alive!"
Lucas stepped directly beside Emily, his eyes blazing, though his voice remained low and commanding.
"Tell her who you are, Emily."
Emily looked from Lucas to the phone in her palm, the world she had known for twenty-five years crumbling into dust before her eyes.
"Mom... am I Isabella?"
A dead, suffocating silence fell over the phone line.
The ragged weeping stopped instantly.
All that could be heard was the faint crackle of cell tower static and the distant rumble of thunder.
When Martha finally spoke again, her voice sounded twenty years older, hollowed out by an ancient, terrible sorrow.
"You were never supposed to hear that name again," Martha whispered, each word soaked in regret.
"I burned every record. I changed my name. I hid in the poorest corners of the city so they would never track us down."
"Why?" Emily cried out, collapsing onto a nearby metal chair, her knees completely failing her.
"Who was I, Mom? What did they do to me?"
"I kept you safe," Martha wept, her voice trembling with unconditional maternal devotion.
"Your grandfather ordered your death, Emily! He couldn't let his daughter's child take the inheritance! He told them to drown you in the bay and make it look like an accidental fall from the cliffs!"
The air in the surveillance room turned sub-zero.
Lucas stood frozen, his eyes widening in pure horror as the dark, unspoken secret of his family’s dynasty was finally spoken aloud.
"I took you that night," Martha sobbed.
"I was your nurse, Isabella. I wrapped you in a blanket, stole my brother's car, and drove through the storm until the gas ran out. I gave you my life. I gave you everything I had."
"Mom..." Emily choked on her own tears.
"Run, baby," Martha pleaded, the line beginning to break up with interference.
"Victor was the one who paid the guards that night. If Victor saw you... he’s coming to finish what he started twenty-one years ago."
A sudden, violent crash of shattering glass echoed through Martha's end of the line, followed by the sound of heavy boots kicking open a wooden door.
"Mom?!" Emily screamed into the phone.
"Martha?!"
May you like
A deep, unfamiliar voice barked on the phone: "Clear the back rooms! Find her phone!"
Then, the line went dead.
