CHAPTER 9

The silence after Lanc left was heavier than before, filled with the echo of his monstrous confession. *She was weak.* The words were branded onto my soul. Dr. Sapiera helped me to the couch, his hands gentle, his face a mask of horrified sympathy.

“I need to get you ice for that,” he murmured, looking at the welt rising on my cheek.

“Later,” I said, my voice hoarse but steady. The shock was receding, burned away by a cold, focused fury. I pointed to the crumpled file on the floor. “We need that.”

He retrieved it, carefully smoothing out the pages. The evidence was all there, a roadmap of betrayal signed by Stella’s brother. It was a weapon, but as Lanc had so clearly demonstrated, a useless one against his power and influence. He’d swat any legal challenge away like a gnat.

“He’s right, you know,” I said, more to myself than to the doctor. “Going public, going to the police… it’s what he expects. He’s already prepared for it. He’ll paint me as a hysterical, grieving widow, and you as an unethical doctor preying on my instability.”

“So what do we do?” Dr. Sapiera asked, his voice tight with frustration. “We cannot let him get away with this.”

“We find a weapon he doesn’t expect.” I turned to my laptop, the screen still glowing with the futile search for *Elara*. “We find her. Not for him. For us.”

“Gwen, a name from a drunken memory… it could be nothing. It could be wrong.”

“Stella believed it. The fear in her eyes was real.” My fingers flew across the keyboard, trying new combinations. “Elara” and “Eva.” “Disappeared” and the name of the old neighborhood. “Missing father.”

The results were the same. A dead end.

“Think,” I urged myself, closing my eyes, trying to channel the desperate, grieving mother I was, to think of what a mother would do. “She disappeared. She wanted to hide. She wouldn’t use her real name. Not if she was scared.”

“An alias?” Dr. Sapiera said, sinking into the chair opposite me.

“Or she’d change it legally. But to do that, you need a reason. A life event. A…” My eyes snapped open. “A death.”

A new idea, dark and desperate, took root. I opened a new browser tab and went to the city’s public archives. Obituaries.

“What are you looking for?” the doctor asked, leaning forward.

“The priest said the rabbit was from Eva’s father. That he died. If we can’t find Elara, maybe we find him.” I typed in a date range from twelve to fifteen years ago. I added the old neighborhood’s name as a filter. The list narrowed. I started scanning names, my heart pounding.

It felt impossible. A thousand John Does and Maria Santiagos.

Then I saw it.

A short, sad notice from thirteen years ago. *Miguel Santos, beloved father, taken too soon. Survived by his loving wife, Elara, and young daughter, Eva. Services to be held at St. Ignatius.*

Miguel Santos. Elara Santos. Eva Santos.

They had been real. They were a family.

“I found them,” I breathed, my voice trembling. Dr. Sapiera came to look over my shoulder.

“Santos,” he whispered. “It’s a common name, but…”

“But now we have a full name. Elara Santos.” I plugged it into a people-search database, one of the pricey ones that Lanc would never think I could afford or know how to use. I paid with a pre-paid credit card, my hands shaking.

A list of results appeared. Most were old, outdated addresses. But one… one was current. An address across the city, in a quiet, middle-class suburb. A place to hide in plain sight.

I wrote it down on a scrap of paper, my handwriting jagged. Elara Santos. 42 Willow Lane.

“This is it,” I said, holding up the paper. It felt like holding a live wire.

“What are you going to do?” Dr. Sapiera asked, his face etched with concern.

“I’m going to talk to her.” I stood up, grabbing my jacket. “I’m going to tell her what her act of kindness all those years ago set in motion. I’m going to show her the wreckage of the family he destroyed while searching for her.”

“Gwen, wait.” He caught my arm. “You can’t just show up on her doorstep. Think about it. She’s been hiding for over a decade. This could destroy her life, too.”

“My life is already destroyed!” The words tore out of me, raw and painful. “My daughter is dead because of his obsession with her! She deserves to know. She has a right to know what kind of monster he became looking for her!”

I pulled away from him, the address clutched in my hand like a talisman.

“Please,” he said. “Be careful. For your sake, and for hers.”

I didn’t answer. I just walked out the door, got in my car, and started driving. The city blurred around me. I wasn't Gwen, the grieving mother. I wasn't Gwen, the betrayed wife. I was just a vessel for the truth, hurtling toward its destination.

Willow Lane was a street of tidy, identical houses with well-kept lawns. Number 42 had a rose bush by the door. It looked peaceful. Normal. The kind of home Angela should have grown up in.

I sat in the car for a long time, watching. A curtain twitched in the front window. Someone was home.

My courage faltered. What was I doing? This woman wasn't to blame. She had tried to do a good thing. She had saved a man's life and then fled from the potential fallout. I understood that now more than ever.

But I had to know. I had to see the face that had haunted my marriage and doomed my daughter.

I got out of the car and walked up the path. My legs felt like lead. Each step was a betrayal of this woman’s hard-won peace, but a necessary step toward my own war.

I rang the bell.

The door opened. The woman who stood there was in her late thirties, maybe early forties. She had kind eyes, lines of worry and warmth around them. She wore a simple sweater and jeans, and she was wiping her hands on a dish towel.

“Can I help you?” she asked, her voice curious, polite.

And I knew. I knew it was her. Her voice. It was exactly as Lanc had described it all those years ago. Not honey and smoke, but warm and soft, with a faint, melodic accent.

I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. I just stood there, a shaking, bruised woman on her doorstep, holding a truth that would shatter her world.

Her eyes flickered over my face, over the fresh bruise on my cheek, and her expression shifted from polite curiosity to genuine concern.

“Are you alright, dear?” she asked, her brow furrowing. “Do you need help?”

The kindness in her voice, the immediate offer of help to a perfect stranger, undid me. This was the woman Lanc had spent a fortune searching for. This was the heart he had compared everyone else to.

And he had killed my daughter for a ghost he never truly knew.

Tears I could no longer hold back spilled down my cheeks. “My name is Gwen Arcony,” I choked out. “My husband is Lanc Arcony. I think… I think you saved his life a long time ago.”

The dish towel fell from her hands. All the color drained from her face. The warmth in her eyes vanished, replaced by pure, unadulterated terror.

She took a stumbling step back, her hand flying to her mouth. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “No. Please, no.”