Chapter 7 - The Cousin I Never Knew
My entire childhood had been built around missing pieces.
Now they were returning all at once.
My father had a sister named Laura.
After a family dispute, they stopped speaking.
I had been too young to remember her.
Laura later married a man named Carter too, keeping the same surname by coincidence, and had twin daughters.
Emily and Sophie.
Mason explained everything slowly.
Emily was my first cousin.
Her trust came from our shared grandfather.
So did mine.
Different assets.
Different terms.
Same family fortune.
Arthur Morgan had not simply targeted wealthy women.
He had spent years hunting branches of one family.
My family.
Rebecca told us Emily had survived because she had known something would happen.
On the night she was supposed to die, she switched places with Sophie.
Not intentionally.
Sophie had arrived unexpectedly after receiving a frantic call.
Emily had discovered evidence hidden inside the nursery wall.
She left the house to contact an attorney.
Sophie stayed behind.
Then the ventilation system was sabotaged.
By the time Emily returned, Sophie was dead.
Emily realized Ethan and Margaret believed the body was hers because the sisters were identical.
So she disappeared.
“Why didn’t she go to the police?”
Rebecca laughed bitterly.
“She tried.”
Someone inside the department leaked her location.
She ran.
For six years.
I couldn’t imagine living like that.
“Where is she now?”
Rebecca looked at Mason.
“I don’t know.”
“But you saw her.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because she contacted me after she learned Ethan married you.”
Emily had been watching.
Protecting me from a distance.
Rebecca’s supposed affair with Ethan had actually begun as an attempt to collect evidence.
But Ethan discovered the deception.
Instead of confronting Rebecca, he used her.
He deliberately let me see the messages.
He knew I would confront him.
Then Margaret pushed me.
I stared at Rebecca.
“You said Ethan was afraid of someone else.”
She nodded.
“He is.”
“Who?”
Before she answered, shouting erupted outside.
An officer entered.
“Mason.”
“What?”
“Margaret Morgan just collapsed during interrogation.”
“Heart attack?”
The officer shook his head.
“Poison.”
Everyone went silent.
Margaret had been in police custody.
Under surveillance.
Protected.
Yet someone had reached her anyway.
Mason’s phone buzzed.
A message had arrived from the unidentified number.
Margaret talked too much.
Then another message followed.
May you like
Claire turns thirty in ten days.
Bring me what Daniel hid, or Emily dies for real this time.
