Chapter 4 - The Man Beneath the Mansion
I returned to the mansion before sunrise.
Police vehicles lined the circular driveway.
Edwin stood beneath the front arch arguing with an officer.
Beverly and Annika were nowhere in sight.
The moment Edwin saw me, he crossed the marble steps.
“Your people broke into my wine cellar.”
“My house.”
His face hardened.
“You think a temporary order makes you powerful?”
“No.”
I held up the brass key.
“This does.”
He recognized it.
The anger disappeared.
“Where did you get that?”
“My father.”
“He was not supposed to have it.”
The sentence escaped before Edwin could stop it.
Jonathan heard.
So did the detective standing beside us.
“Why not?” I asked.
Edwin stepped back.
“I meant—”
“You knew about the key.”
“It belonged to my father.”
“The father you said was dead.”
Edwin turned toward the police.
“This is a family matter.”
The detective shook his head.
“There’s a man locked beneath your cellar. It stopped being private.”
We entered together.
Brutus waited beside the hidden wall.
His paws were bloody from clawing the wood.
The moment he saw me, he pressed his head against my hip.
I touched his neck.
“Good boy.”
Edwin watched with visible resentment.
The hidden door had no handle.
Only a narrow brass slot.
I inserted the key.
A mechanism shifted behind the wall.
The door opened.
A narrow staircase descended beneath the mansion.
The smell reached us first.
Damp concrete.
Medication.
Human waste.
At the bottom was a steel room.
An elderly man sat on a cot, wrists bruised, silver hair hanging over his eyes.
He looked up.
Robert Stanford.
Edwin’s supposedly dead father.
Even weakened, he had Edwin’s face.
But where Edwin’s eyes held cruelty, Robert’s held exhaustion.
Brutus rushed to him.
The massive dog lowered his body and whined.
Robert wrapped both arms around his neck.
“You remembered.”
The dog licked his face.
My father’s final words returned.
Trust the dog.
Robert looked at me.
“You must be Claire.”
I knelt beside him.
“My father called you.”
“He saved my life twice.”
“What happened here?”
Robert looked toward Edwin.
“My son happened.”
Edwin’s face twisted.
“You abandoned us.”
“You drugged me.”
“You destroyed the family.”
“I stopped you from selling it.”
The detective raised a hand.
“One person at a time.”
Robert described the night of his disappearance.
Ten years earlier, he discovered Beverly had been stealing from Stanford medical subsidiaries.
She altered patient billing records, moved money through shell charities, and bribed clinic administrators.
Edwin helped her hide the transactions.
When Robert confronted them, Beverly injected him with a sedative.
They staged a boating accident.
A body recovered near the coast was identified using dental records Beverly had altered.
Robert escaped the clinic where they held him.
He lived under protection for years while building a criminal case.
“Why return to this mansion?” I asked.
“Your father contacted me after your wedding.”
He learned Edwin was repeating the same pattern.
Control the spouse.
Forge medical records.
Create financial dependency.
Use a false child to activate the trust.
Robert entered the mansion through old service tunnels two weeks earlier to recover evidence from his vault.
Beverly found him.
She locked him beneath the cellar.
“She planned to move me tonight,” he said.
“To where?”
“A private clinic in Nevada.”
Edwin shook his head.
“He is confused.”
Robert looked at him.
“You always said that when truth inconvenienced you.”
The detective asked officers to take Robert upstairs for medical care.
Before leaving, Robert pointed toward a steel cabinet.
“The evidence is there.”
The brass key opened it.
Inside were accounting ledgers, medical files, and video recordings.
One file carried my name.
CLAIRE STANFORD — REPRODUCTIVE ACQUISITION.
I could barely breathe.
Jonathan opened it.
Inside were consent forms bearing my forged signature.
Laboratory reports showed twelve eggs had been removed.
Nine embryos had been created.
“Whose genetic material was used?” I asked.
Jonathan turned the page.
His face changed.
“Edwin’s.”
My knees nearly buckled.
Edwin had created embryos using our genetic material without my consent.
But one line was highlighted in red.
EMBRYO TRANSFER COMPLETED.
I stared at the date.
Eight months earlier.
“Who is carrying it?”
Robert answered from the stairs.
“Annika.”
The room went silent.
Annika was not Edwin’s cousin as he claimed.
May you like
She was carrying my biological child.
📖 Claire discovered Annika was pregnant with an embryo stolen from her body, but Beverly had already disappeared with the woman carrying it. 👇
