Chapter 20 - THE FAMILY THEY STOLE COULD NOT BE DESTROYED
One year later, Blackwood Manor no longer felt like a mausoleum.
The locked servants’ wing had been renovated into a library and art room.
Lily filled the walls with drawings.
Rose covered one entire table with puzzles.
Amelia planted white roses along the south garden.
Ethan had asked why white.
She smiled.
“Because we’ve had enough darkness.”
Therapy became part of their lives.
Not a secret.
Not something shameful.
Lily still woke from nightmares about the dark room.
Rose still panicked when doors locked unexpectedly.
Amelia sometimes lost words when memories overwhelmed her.
Ethan still visited the hospital memorial.
But now he did not go alone.
On the twins’ ninth birthday, the family returned to the cemetery.
Lily placed yellow flowers beside the grave Ethan once believed belonged to her.
Rose placed a small white rose beside them.
Rebecca Cole stood nearby.
The remains in the grave had finally been identified as Rebecca’s biological daughter.
After seven years, her child had her real name.
Grace Cole.
Rebecca touched the new stone.
“Thank you for bringing her home.”
Ethan shook his head.
“She should never have been taken from you.”
“No.”
Rebecca looked toward Lily and Rose.
“But we can’t change where the story started.”
“Only what we do after we learn the truth.”
Ethan understood.
Blackwood Holdings had changed too.
The employee trust owned twenty percent.
Independent directors controlled compliance.
The secret political funds were gone.
Several former executives were serving prison sentences.
Samuel Hayes became head of a foundation supporting families affected by medical identity fraud and child trafficking.
His father surrendered and testified against Victor.
Charles began serving his own sentence in a federal facility.
Ethan had visited once.
Charles did not ask to be forgiven.
He simply asked about Lily and Rose.
“They’re learning to ride horses.”
Charles smiled.
“Lily always loved animals.”
Ethan stared at him.
“You watched her grow up from a distance?”
Charles lowered his eyes.
“Yes.”
That answer ended the visit.
Some wounds could heal.
Others could only stop bleeding.
Nora wrote letters to Lily from prison.
Ethan did not decide whether Lily should read them.
He let Lily decide.
She kept the first three unopened.
Then one afternoon, she opened the fourth.
Afterward, she sat beside Ethan on the porch.
“Do you hate Aunt Nora?”
Ethan considered the question.
“I hate what she did.”
“Is that different?”
“Yes.”
“Can someone do terrible things and still do one good thing?”
“Yes.”
Lily thought about it.
“She warned me about the tea.”
“She did.”
“But she also lied about you.”
“Yes.”
Lily leaned against him.
“People are complicated.”
Ethan smiled.
“You’re getting smarter than your father.”
“I already was.”
From the garden, Rose shouted.
“Daddy!”
Ethan looked up instantly.
Rose stood beside Amelia holding a small wooden box.
“We found something!”
The box had been buried beneath an old rosebush.
Amelia frowned.
“I’ve never seen it before.”
Ethan opened it.
Inside were photographs.
Charles.
Victor.
Amelia.
The hospital.
Several people Ethan did not recognize.
And one photograph of Lily and Rose as newborns.
On the back was a handwritten message.
IF ETHAN EVER FINDS THIS, TELL HIM THE FIRE WAS ONLY THE BEGINNING.
Ethan stared at the handwriting.
Amelia moved beside him.
“Do you recognize it?”
He did.
It belonged to his grandfather.
A man who had died sixteen years before the hospital fire.
“That’s impossible.”
Rose picked up another photograph.
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Who is this?”
Ethan looked.
The photograph showed his grandfather standing beside a much younger Charles and Victor.
Behind them was a building Ethan had never seen.
A sign above the entrance read:
BLACKWOOD CHILDREN’S RESEARCH FOUNDATION.
A date was written beneath it.
Thirty-one years earlier.
Amelia turned over the final photograph.
Her expression changed.
“What?”
Ethan asked.
She handed it to him.
It showed six newborn babies inside a private nursery.
Each crib had a number.
On the far left was an infant labeled BLACKWOOD SUBJECT 1.
Beneath the photograph were four handwritten words.
THE FIRST HEIR SURVIVED.
Ethan stared at it.
Charles had always told him he was his firstborn child.
But according to the photograph, another Blackwood heir had existed before Ethan.
Someone had spent more than thirty years erasing that person from the family history.
Lily looked up at him.
“Does this mean we have another family member?”
Ethan slowly closed the box.
He had spent the previous year believing the worst Blackwood secrets had finally been exposed.
He had been wrong.
Amelia reached for his hand.
“What are you going to do?”
Ethan looked toward Lily.
Toward Rose.
Toward the house that had once been built on lies and now belonged to the family that survived them.
Then he looked down at the photograph again.
This time he did not feel afraid.
He felt ready.
“We find out who they stole before they stole you.”
Far away, inside a quiet coastal home in Maine, an elderly woman turned off a television report about the Blackwood family.
She opened a locked drawer.
Inside was an identical photograph of the six newborns.
Beside it rested an old hospital bracelet.
BLACKWOOD, MALE.
SUBJECT 1.
The woman looked toward a man standing at the window.
He was in his early forties.
He had Ethan Blackwood’s eyes.
“The truth finally reached him,” she said.
The man did not turn around.
“Then Ethan is going to come looking for me.”
The woman nodded.
“Yes.”
He stared toward the ocean.
After thirty-one years of hiding, the first Blackwood heir smiled.
“Good.”
“Because there’s something our family never told him.”
He turned toward the photograph.
May you like
“Victor was never the person Ethan should have been afraid of.”
TOBE CONTINUED
