All Chapters of His Heart Stopped.. Mine Was Sold: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

Samuel met us at the garden gate of the mansion, walking without his cane for the first time since his release from the hospital. His steps were slow, careful, but unassisted, and the pride on his face when we approached was unmistakable."There he is," Samuel said, extending his hand to Victor. "The man who discovered his grandmother is the devil and is still showing up for breakfast."Victor's mouth twitched despite himself. "That is one way to summarize the situation.""Sit with me." Samuel led us to the bench beneath the oak, the same bench where he and I had walked laps during his recovery. "Shaznay, take the baby inside. Your mother has been knitting something that is either a sweater or a tablecloth; I cannot tell which.""Daddy...""I need to speak to your husband alone." Samuel looked at me with the firm, gentle authority of a father who was asking, not commanding. "Give us an hour."I kissed Victor's cheek, transferred Catherine to Grace, who waited at the back door, and wen

**Shaznay's POV**I read Evelyn's message six times. Each reading carved the words deeper into my brain until they stopped being letters on a screen and became a blade pressed against the soft center of everything I trusted."Not baby Catherine. The other one."Victor slept beside me, his hand still resting on the edge of the crib, his breathing deep and unguarded. I watched his face in the glow of the phone screen and felt the familiar pull of two instincts; the need to protect him, and the need for truth.I did not sleep. I sat against the headboard with the phone face-down on my lap and stared at the ceiling until grey light replaced the dark. When baby Catherine woke at five, I fed her, changed her, and placed her back in the crib before Victor stirred."Shaznay?" His voice was thick with sleep. "You look tired.""I need to show you something."He sat up immediately. The alertness snapped into place behind his eyes, trained by months of emergencies and midnight crises.I handed hi

**Shaznay's POV**Iris gripped my finger with surprising strength. Her brown eyes studied my face with the same focused intensity Victor wore when he was analyzing a problem, and the resemblance hit me so hard I had to breathe through it.This was his daughter. Not by choice. Not by love. By a procedure authorized by a woman who treated human life like a chess piece.Clara sat on the sofa. Victor remained standing, his back against the wall, arms crossed. Jackson waited outside the front door."Start from the beginning," Victor said. His voice carried no warmth."Evelyn approached me eight months into your coma." Clara's hands pressed flat against her knees. "Benjamin had already introduced us. I was living with him at the time, in his apartment. Evelyn came to visit one afternoon while Benjamin was out.""What did she propose?""She said the fertility procedure with Shaznay might not succeed. That she needed insurance." Clara's gaze dropped. "She offered me fifty thousand to carry a

**Shaznay's POV**Victor told me about the security payments while I nursed baby Catherine in the upstairs bedroom. His words were clipped, precise, stripped of anything unnecessary; the way he spoke when his mind was racing ahead of his mouth."Evelyn is funding security for a facility that should be vacant. Ongoing payments. Current." He paced the length of the room. "She released my mother but continued paying the guards.""Which means someone else is being held there.""Or something is being stored there." Victor stopped pacing. "Jackson is researching the facility's ownership records. I want to visit it personally.""Victor, the last time you visited an unfamiliar location on short notice, you walked into a warehouse trap.""That was different.""How?"He opened his mouth, then closed it. I raised an eyebrow."Take Jackson. Take four guards. And call me the moment you step inside." I shifted Catherine to my other arm. "If Evelyn is hiding another person in that facility...""Then

**Victor's POV**Margaret arrived at the mansion in a wheelchair, attended by the private nurse I hired to replace Evelyn's staff at the facility. She was frail, her hands shaking, her eyes clouded with the fog of her condition, but when Jackson wheeled her through the front door, she looked up at the chandelier in the entrance hall and whispered, "Simon's house."She recognized the mansion. Through nine years of dementia, through captivity, through whatever Evelyn had done to erase her from the world... she remembered.I knelt before her wheelchair. "Margaret, can you hear me?"Her eyes drifted, unfocused. Then sharpened. A momentary clearing, like sunlight through storm clouds."You are Richard's boy," she said. Her voice was papery, distant."Yes. Victor.""Victor." She tasted the name. "Simon talked about you. Said you would be strong.""Margaret, the woman who came to this house. The one who pretended to be you. Do you know who she was?"Her brow creased. The clarity wavered, thr