Chapter Seven

The room suddenly felt incredibly small, beween the decaying walls of the old apartment, the hidden lockbox, and the birth certificate trembling in my hands, everything else seemed to fade into the background compared to the words Marcus had just spoken.

"He's supposed to be dead."

I stared at him, my heart hammering violently against my ribs. "What do you mean by supposed to be dead…Marcus looked deeply uncomfortable, for the first time since I'd known him, he seemed genuinely, completely unsettled.

He gently took the document from my shaking fingers, his eyes lingering on the father's name before he let out a long, slow exhale.

"I never met him personally," he admitted…."Then how on earth do you know who he is?"

"Because I've spent years working with corporate records, inheritance disputes, and estate law," Marcus explained, his voice tight.

My stomach knotted. "And?"

Marcus hesitated, I absolutely hated when people hesitated especially tonight, “Marcus, tell me." "He was one of the wealthiest men in Europe, Elena."

My heart umped. "What?”

"But he wasn't just some businessman," Marcus continued, the silence stretching between us. "He was nobility from a real, old-money aristocratic family."

I forced myself to laugh not because it was funny, but because it sounded completely insane. "Are you telling me my biological father was royalty?"...."Not royalty," Marcus said, shaking his head. "But close enough to make no real difference."

The nervous laugh died instantly in my throat, I looked back down at the certificate, and that unfamiliar name suddenly felt a hundred times heavier and a hundred times more dangerous nothing about my life made any sense anymore before I could even process it to ask another question, my phone vibrated in my hand.

An Unknown Number again.

I unlocked it immediately and a single message popped up on the screen… Leave the apartment now.

My blood ran cold. Marcus read the warning over my shoulder and didn't waste a beat. "Let's go." For once, I didn't argue,we grabbed the lockbox and the documents and rushed down the dark stairs, the building felt entirely different now every shadow seemed alive, and every creak of the floorboards sounded like someone tracking our steps.

The exact moment our feet hit the pavement outside, a deafening explosion shattered the night.

BOOM.

A wave of intense heat slammed into my back,Marcus reacted instantly, grabbing me and throwing us both forward onto the ground,shards of glass rained across the street like hail nearby car alarms erupted into a chaotic chorus, and people down the block started screaming. 

I scrambled to my feet and looked back, the top floor of the abandoned building was completely engulfed in roaring flames.

The apartment,Esther's sanctuary.

Fire exploded outward through the windows, painting the night sky orange, my ears were ringing so loudly I couldn't move, think, or breathe for several seconds.

Someone had just blown up the apartment to destroy the evidence which was the lockbox, the documents, everything meaning if we had stayed inside for even one more minute, we would have been burned alive.

Marcus was already tugging hard on my arm, pulling me toward his car. "Move, Elena!"

We jumped inside, and the engine roared to life behind us, the flames climbed higher into the dark sky someone had been watching us and knew we had found that box, and they had just decided that we couldn't be allowed to keep digging.

We didn't dare go back to the Vance house because neither of us felt remotely safe there. Instead, Marcus drove me to a secure, high-end apartment owned by his law firm, the place overlooked the river it was private, anonymous, and exactly what we needed to disappear for a moment.

The moment we stepped inside, Marcus went to work locking every single door and window, then went back around to check them the second time.

"You really think we were followed?" I asked, sinking onto the couch.

"Yes," he answered without hesitation,he clearly had already made up his mind, my entire body suddenly felt heavy with exhaustion everything had moved at a dizzying pace. 

The car crash, finding my grandmother, the break-in, the explosion, the birth certificate, the dead aristocrat... my entire reality had been ripped apart in less than twenty-four hours.

Marcus came over and sat across from me the papers from the lockbox lay scattered on the coffee table between us, but neither of us reached out to touch them yet.

Finally, I voiced the question that was haunting me. "Why would someone go to such extreme lengths to hide who I am?"

Marcus rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. "There are a few possibilities."

"I hate lawyer answers, Marcus."

The corner of his mouth twitched into a faint smile. "Fair enough." Then his face grew deadly serious again. "If this birth certificate is real, someone spent decades covering up your identity for one reason which maybe Money. It's always money."

I couldn't even argue with him every terrible thing Clara and Richard had ever done to me eventually traced its way back to greed.

Marcus reached over and opened the folder again. "There are other things in here." Together, we began sorting through the contents of the box there were old photographs, handwritten letters, bank statements, and yellowed newspaper clippings, most of them were decades old.

Then, a specific photograph caught my eye I pulled it out immediately. It showed a much younger Esther standing next to a man who was tall, dark-haired, handsome, and carried himself with an undeniable air of power even in a faded, old picture, he looked like someone who commanded every room he walked into.

I flipped the photo over,I saw a short handwritten note covered the back,For Esther,Thank you for protecting her It was dated twenty-seven years ago exactly one year before I was born.

My pulse quickened. "Marcus, look at this."

He took the photo from my hands, and his face instantly fell. "What is it?....What's wrong?"

"I've seen this man before," Marcus whispered, staring intensely at the image as he tried to remember the face. 

Suddenly, a flash of recognition hit him. "Oh God."

My stomach twisted “What?"

Marcus stood up abruptly, pacing the floor. "The Vance charity gala. The portrait."

I frowned, completely confused…. "What portrait?"

"The massive one hanging right inside Nathaniel's father's office," Marcus said, his voice dropping to a stunned whisper. "The man in this photograph... he looks exactly like the founder of Nathaniel’s family empire."

The room felt like it was spinning again. 

"What” That's impossible." “Not just similar, Elena," Marcus insisted, swallowing hard. "He looks exactly like him."

It didn't make any sense to me nathaniel's family was supposed to have absolutely nothing to do with my biological past, or at least, that's what I had been led to believe. 

Yet somehow, this mysterious stranger from my hidden birth certificate was directly connected to the Vances,the same family that had essentially bought me into a forced marriage,kept me trapped and had somehow become the dark center of every single mystery in my life.

********

At that exact moment across the city, Nathaniel Vance was completely losing his patience he stood in his grand study, staring through the open door of the empty guest room.

Elena’s room empty again.

His jaw tightened in frustration, the massive house felt strangely, uncomfortably quiet tonight he hadn't seen her or spoken to her since the incident with the police at the hospital.

Normally, her absence would have been a relief to him, but right now, it was infuriating, the study door clicked open, and Elora walked in with a smooth smile on her face Nathaniel barely even glanced in her direction.

"Where is she?" he demanded.

Elora’s smile faltered slightly. "Who?"

Nathaniel finally looked up at her, his eyes cold and dangerous. "Don't play games with me, Elora."

Elora’s stomach tightened because she hadn't expected this at all for the past two years, Nathaniel had barely even acknowledged Elena's existence and now all of a sudden, he was demanding to know where she was.

"Maybe she's out with her lawyer," Elora suggested carelessly, trying to hide her nerves.

Nathaniel didn't say a word instead, he simply picked up a document from his desk and held it up, it was an official traffic-camera report.

Elora’s blood instantly froze she recognized the location on the paper immediately and it was the address of the abandoned building ,the exact same building that had just hit the news after exploding twenty minutes ago.

Nathaniel’s eyes narrowed into slits as he stared her down. "Care to explain why my wife was spotted near a building right before it blew up?" For the first time that night, Elora looked completely terrified.

**********

Back at the safehouse apartment, my phone buzzed with a notification it was a new email from an anonymous address which had no sender name or subject line, just a single video file attachment.

Marcus walked over and stood right beside me as I clicked on it and slowly, the footage began to play, the video was grainy, clearly pulled from a security camera in a dimly lit parking garage. 

Specifically, the hospital garage where Marcus had parked earlier that day we watched the screen in dead silence,a figure wearing a dark hoodie approached Marcus's car then the person bent down low by the rear wheel, disappearing from the camera's view for several agonizing minutes. 

When they finally stood back up, they were finished with whatever they were doing and turned to leave as they walked away, the person turned their head slightly toward the camera lens and it was just enough for the garage lighting to hit their face perfectly.

My breath completely caught in my throat, beside me Marcus went totally cold.

Staring back at us from the screen wasn't Elora,it wasn't Richard, and it wasn't Clara but It was someone infinitely worse. 

Someone who had absolutely no business being involved in this nightmare and someone who was supposed to have died years ago.

The video cut to black in the reflection of the dark screen, I could see the absolute horror painted across Marcus's face.

"That's impossible," he whispered.