Chapter 5 - THE DAUGHTER OF CONRAD WARD
The ambulance doors closed on Eleanor before Valerie understood what she had heard.
Sebastian stood in the rain with his brother’s words and Eleanor’s blood mixing inside his head.
Valerie pulled away from him.
“Did you know?”
“No.”
“You did not even ask what she meant.”
“I am trying to decide which part of it is a lie.”
“All of it could be.”
Her voice broke.
“Or none of it.”
At the hospital, Eleanor went into surgery under armed guard.
Marcus found them a private consultation room.
He locked the door.
“Conrad had an affair with Eleanor Voss twenty-nine years ago,” he said.
Valerie stared at the blank television screen.
“Stop.”
“Daniel Voss married her after she became pregnant.”
“Stop talking.”
“He raised you as his own.”
Valerie turned on him with a fury that surprised everyone.
“My father was the man who stayed.”
Marcus lowered his gaze.
“Yes.”
Sebastian stood near the door.
He and Valerie had shared a bed hours earlier.
Now there was a possibility that they shared blood.
The thought made him physically ill.
Marcus understood.
“You are not related,” he said.
Sebastian’s eyes sharpened.
“How could you know that?”
“Because Conrad Ward was not your biological father.”
Silence expanded through the room.
Sebastian gave a small, humorless laugh.
“You expect me to believe you have known this?”
“I was paid to know it.”
“By whom?”
“Your mother.”
Sebastian crossed the distance between them and drove Marcus into the wall.
“You worked for her?”
“I protected you for her.”
“My mother died when I was nine.”
Marcus did not resist.
“No, Sebastian.”
He reached slowly into his jacket and produced a recent photograph.
It showed a silver-haired woman entering a private clinic in Switzerland.
“She died three weeks ago.”
Sebastian released him.
On the back of the photograph was a handwritten message.
May you like
The handwriting belonged to the mother he had mourned for twenty-seven years.
DO NOT LET CONRAD OPEN VAULT NINE.
