Chapter 6 - THE GRAVE BENEATH THE WINTER GARDEN
Her name was Rebecca Carter.
She was born when I was five.
My father told my mother the baby died during delivery.
In reality, Rebecca survived.
She had a congenital heart condition.
My father believed a medically fragile daughter would weaken the family image.
He placed her in a private care facility funded through Bellweather.
Mrs. Harris discovered her existence years later.
By then, Rebecca was nineteen.
She had escaped the facility and found Julian.
Brother and sister began investigating together.
Rebecca later gave birth to Sophie.
Julian was not the father.
The Continuity code J-03 referred to Julian’s branch of the trust because he became Sophie’s legal protector.
Sophie’s biological father was unknown in the initial records.
Rebecca hid inside the Carter estate guesthouse under another name.
Mrs. Harris presented her as a distant relative employed in the household.
My father was already ill.
I traveled constantly.
I never noticed the young woman working in the gardens was my sister.
“She died here?” I asked.
Mrs. Harris nodded.
“Charles Voss found her.”
Rebecca planned to reveal the Continuity program during a Carter Foundation gala.
Before she could, she suffered a sudden cardiac event.
Voss signed the death certificate.
Mrs. Harris believed he caused it.
My father ordered a private burial beneath the winter garden.
No police.
No public record.
“He told me Sophie would be taken if I spoke,” Mrs. Harris said. “So I stayed and raised her.”
All these years, the woman who managed my home had also guarded the grave of my sister.
We moved to a secure federal facility while investigators searched my estate.
The winter garden stood behind the east greenhouse.
Beneath a row of white roses, forensic teams recovered human remains.
DNA confirmed Rebecca was my sister.
Toxicology found a rare cardiac compound in preserved tissue.
The drug had been manufactured by Carter Biomedical.
My own company produced the substance used to kill her.
The signature authorizing the research batch belonged to my father.
Whether he knew Voss intended murder remained uncertain.
Either possibility was terrible.
Federal agents brought Sophie to the facility.
She was eleven, quiet, and suspicious of every adult in the room.
Mrs. Harris told her the truth slowly.
Rebecca was her mother.
Nathan was her uncle.
Lily was her cousin.
Samuel was also her cousin.
Sophie did not cry.
“Did everyone know except me?”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t know.”
“Adults always say that.”
She was right to distrust us.
The children in Continuity had grown up inside stories designed for adult benefit.
No revelation could instantly repair that.
Then Charles Voss contacted Daniel Cho.
He offered Julian’s location in exchange for the flash drive.
Voss claimed Julian was injured but alive.
He also claimed Amelia had helped create Samuel willingly.
Amelia denied it.
“She approved an embryo transfer eight months ago,” Voss said through the encrypted call. “Ask her whose womb carried the child.”
Amelia’s face changed.
Samuel had been born through a surrogate.
The identity had not appeared in the records we recovered.
“Who was she?” I asked.
Amelia whispered,
“My sister, Caroline.”
Caroline Grant volunteered after Amelia discovered that my preserved sample had already been thawed illegally.
She believed carrying the pregnancy would prevent Bellweather from placing the embryo with an unknown family.
Then Caroline vanished during the seventh month.
Bellweather reported a medical emergency and claimed the child died.
Amelia later discovered Samuel alive in the institute.
Caroline’s status remained unknown.
Voss sent a live photograph.
A woman lay inside a hospital room beneath armed guard.
Caroline.
Beside her sat Julian, bloodied but conscious.
Voss held both of them.
The location appeared to be a medical facility.
Sophie recognized the wallpaper.
“That’s the old clinic near the north reservoir.”
Mrs. Harris looked at her.
“How do you know?”
“Grandma took me there every year for tests.”
Sophie had not received ordinary pediatric checkups.
Bellweather had been monitoring the hidden Carter children throughout their lives.
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Voss did not merely know where they were.
He had always owned the map to reach them.
