Chapter 16 - The Reflection in the Marble
Khloe saw the marble table again.
Not as it had appeared after the attack.
As it had appeared before.
Polished.
Untouched.
Reflecting the suite ceiling.
Isabella’s crimson gown moved across its surface.
A silver ornament caught the light near her shoulder.
Behind her, the service door opened.
Someone entered.
Khloe could not turn her head inside the memory.
She could only watch the reflection.
A black access tablet.
A hospital badge.
A hand wearing a narrow steel ring.
Not Miles’s hand.
Not Celia’s.
A woman’s hand.
The woman had stood behind Isabella before the attack.
She had signaled when Sebastian reached the corridor.
Khloe tried to see the face.
The reflection distorted.
A voice whispered.
“Now.”
Khloe opened her eyes.
Bright surgical lights burned above her.
A ventilator tube filled her throat.
She tried to move.
Pain spread across her abdomen.
Dr. Shaw appeared beside her.
“Khloe, stay still.”
Khloe tried to speak.
The doctor removed the tube after confirming she could breathe.
“My baby?”
“Alive.”
Khloe began crying.
“She needed resuscitation, but she is stable.”
“Her name is Eleanor.”
Dr. Shaw smiled faintly.
“Eleanor Grace Thorne.”
Khloe looked toward the door.
“Sebastian?”
“In federal custody.”
“How long was I unconscious?”
“Eleven hours.”
“Avery?”
“Alive but critical.”
“The other children?”
“Verity is in the neonatal intensive care unit.”
“Hope and Charles are beside her.”
“Your son is still missing.”
Khloe closed her eyes.
The memory returned.
The woman behind Isabella.
The steel ring.
“Get Mara.”
Mara arrived with Gabriel and Charles.
Celia had been placed under police guard.
Isabella remained beside Matteo.
The hospital had reopened limited emergency operations after the explosives were disarmed.
News reports blamed Sebastian for the entire conspiracy.
Miles had vanished.
Khloe described the reflection.
Mara opened the eleven-second security footage.
They enlarged the marble table.
The woman’s face remained hidden.
The steel ring reflected clearly.
Gabriel recognized it.
“That is a Meridian trustee ring.”
“How many exist?” Khloe asked.
“Five.”
Eleanor had one.
Alexander had one.
Charles had one.
Matteo had one.
The fifth belonged to the independent legal trustee.
“Owen,” Khloe said.
Gabriel shook his head.
“Owen inherited the position after his mother died.”
“Who was she?”
“Margaret Mercer.”
Khloe remembered Owen’s mother attending childhood holidays.
Margaret had been Eleanor’s closest friend.
She had died three years earlier.
“Could the ring have passed to someone else?”
“Owen has no siblings.”
Mara replayed the footage frame by frame.
The woman’s wrist showed a small crescent-shaped scar.
Khloe knew that scar.
Avery had received it after breaking a wineglass during college.
“No.”
Mara looked at her.
“The person in the reflection is Avery.”
Khloe remembered Avery’s confession.
She had opened the nursery.
Forwarded calendars.
Copied estate letters.
But standing inside the suite during the attack meant deeper involvement.
“She said Isabella brought her to the penthouse after the attack.”
“She lied.”
Gabriel’s voice remained cautious.
“She may have been coerced.”
“She signaled Isabella to kick me.”
Khloe looked through the hospital window toward the intensive care wing.
Avery lay unconscious after nearly dying while delivering the twins.
Compassion and betrayal collided inside Khloe.
“Why would Miles allow her to carry the babies if she was already working with him?”
Charles answered.
“Because she volunteered.”
Khloe remembered Avery saying the embryos belonged to anonymous donors.
Perhaps that had been another lie.
“Wake her.”
Dr. Shaw objected.
“She is medically unstable.”
“Can she hear us?”
“Possibly.”
“Then bring me to her.”
Khloe could not walk.
Mara arranged a wheelchair and portable monitors.
They moved her into Avery’s intensive care room.
Avery lay pale beneath the blankets.
Her eyes remained closed.
Khloe placed the enlarged reflection beside her hand.
“I know you were in the suite.”
Avery’s heartbeat accelerated.
Dr. Shaw noticed.
“You gave Isabella the signal.”
The heart rate increased again.
“You knew she would attack me.”
A tear slipped from the corner of Avery’s closed eye.
Khloe’s voice hardened.
“Open your eyes.”
Avery did.
Shame filled them.
“I am sorry.”
“Why?”
“He had my brother.”
“What brother?”
“Damian Holt.”
Khloe stared at her.
Avery and the missing technology officer were siblings.
Their different surnames had hidden the connection.
“Our mother gave Damian up before I was born,” Avery whispered.
“We found each other three years ago.”
“Miles used his daughter’s illness to control him.”
“And used Damian to control me.”
“Why become the surrogate?”
“To keep the embryos from another woman.”
“You knew they were mine.”
Avery nodded weakly.
“When?”
“From the beginning.”
Khloe felt something inside her close.
“You listened while I cried about Sebastian.”
“I know.”
“You planned my baby shower while carrying stolen children.”
“I was trying to protect them.”
“You stood behind Isabella.”
Avery’s breathing became ragged.
“She was not supposed to kick you.”
“She shoved me first.”
“The plan was to frighten you into opening the trust.”
“By staging an argument?”
“Isabella was supposed to claim Sebastian had chosen her.”
“And I was expected to collapse?”
“You were expected to call Owen.”
“Why?”
“Miles needed Owen to bring the original trustee device to the hospital.”
Gabriel’s black device.
Miles had eventually stolen it during the explosive crisis.
Every event led toward the same key.
“Who told Isabella to attack me?”
Avery looked toward the door.
“Celia.”
Khloe remembered Celia claiming the kick was not part of the plan.
“Celia gave the order?”
“No.”
Avery’s voice weakened.
“She said one sentence through my earpiece.”
“What sentence?”
“Make the fear real.”
Celia had not specified how.
She had known Isabella’s temperament.
She had expected violence while preserving deniability.
“Where is Miles taking my son?”
Avery’s eyes filled with fear.
“To the first hospital.”
“St. Aurelia?”
“No.”
She struggled for breath.
“The hospital before St. Aurelia.”
Charles stepped closer.
“The river clinic.”
Avery nodded.
Eleanor, Alexander, Charles, and Matteo had begun their work in an abandoned tuberculosis clinic north of the city.
The building had officially burned down thirty years earlier.
“The original server is there,” Charles said.
“And the oldest genetic records.”
Avery looked at Khloe.
“Miles named the boy Alexander.”
Khloe’s entire body rejected the name.
“He is not Alexander.”
“Miles believes the first male heir must carry the founder’s name.”
“Miles does not name my child.”
Avery began crying.
“He wants you to follow.”
“Why?”
“Because your blood can open the final archive.”
“What is inside it?”
“I do not know.”
“Who does?”
Avery looked at Charles.
“Your father.”
Charles lowered his head.
Khloe turned toward him.
“What is in the archive?”
Charles’s silence gave the answer weight.
“Tell me.”
“Evidence that Eleanor’s death was not the first time Miles killed for the trust.”
“Miles was young when my mother died.”
“He was thirty-two.”
“Who did he kill before her?”
Charles looked toward Sebastian’s empty place beside the bed.
“Sebastian’s first child.”
Khloe stared at him.
“Sebastian had another child?”
“Not with another woman.”
Charles’s voice became quieter.
“With you.”
Khloe shook her head.
“That is impossible.”
“You became pregnant during your engagement.”
“No.”
“You were told you had an ovarian cyst.”
The surgery she remembered as routine had occurred two months before the wedding.
“You removed my child?”
“Dr. Shaw did not perform that procedure.”
“Who did?”
May you like
Avery whispered the name.
“Celia.”
