Chapter 8 - The Aunt Who Came Back From the Dead
Nora stared at the surveillance image as though she were seeing a ghost.
Rebecca Reed.
Her grandmother's younger daughter.
The woman who'd disappeared when Nora was fourteen.
"That's impossible," Nora whispered.
I watched her carefully.
"You're sure?"
She nodded.
"She has the same scar above her eyebrow."
On the screen, the woman moved confidently through my kitchen, wearing the uniform of a temporary housekeeper.
She opened a cabinet, retrieved a small container, and approached the plated dinner.
Gabriel stopped the footage.
"She was hired through an outside staffing agency."
I frowned.
"Who authorized it?"
He checked the records.
"Dominic."
Of course.
The man I'd trusted for twenty years had apparently filled my home with people whose identities he controlled.
Nora folded her arms.
"My grandmother told me Rebecca died in an accident."
"What kind of accident?"
"She said there was a fire."
Another fire.
Another death without answers.
I was beginning to realize how much of my life had been constructed from lies.
Gabriel enlarged the image.
Rebecca looked older than Nora remembered, but the resemblance was unmistakable.
"Can you find her?" I asked.
"We're working with investigators. She left the property yesterday."
Nora looked toward me.
"Arthur, if Rebecca is alive, maybe she knows what happened to Grandma."
I nodded.
"We'll find out."
Then she hesitated.
"There's something else."
I looked at her.
"What?"
"My brother."
Nora had mentioned him only once.
The younger brother whose debts had forced her to accept a job inside my mansion.
"What about him?"
"His name is Caleb. He's twenty-one."
"Where is he?"
"Boston."
She looked down.
"He borrowed money from a loan shark to cover medical bills after Grandma got sick. Now the people collecting the debt have been threatening him."
My stomach tightened.
"Who's collecting?"
She shook her head.
"I don't know. Caleb won't tell me."
Gabriel entered a name into his tablet.
A few minutes later, he frowned.
"Miss Reed, does your brother work at a shipping warehouse?"
Nora looked startled.
"Yes."
"South Harbor Logistics?"
She nodded.
Gabriel slowly turned the screen toward me.
South Harbor Logistics was one of the shell companies my father had created.
Dominic had taken control of it six years earlier.
I stared at the records.
Caleb hadn't borrowed from some random loan shark.
He'd borrowed from an organization connected to my own empire.
Then Gabriel opened another file.
A recent photograph showed Caleb standing outside a warehouse.
Beside him stood Rebecca Reed.
And behind them was Dominic Russo.
Nora covered her mouth.
"Oh, my God."
Gabriel looked at me.
"Boss, there's more."
He displayed the final document.
It was an employment agreement.
Caleb's name appeared beneath a confidentiality clause.
But the contract wasn't for warehouse work.
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It was for a private medical research company.
One that had supplied the substance found in my body.
