Chapter 10 - THE SHOT THROUGH THE WINDOW
The bullet missed Caroline by inches.
Security moved everyone to cover.
The shooter fled.
Ballistics traced the rifle to a private security company owned by Margaret Brooks.
Margaret ordered the attack.
Not Luke.
The first Caroline knew where Margaret stored the original trust ledger.
Without it, the legal case relied on copies.
With it, every crime connected.
The ledger was hidden inside the Brooks mansion kitchen wall.
The same kitchen where both women had been burned.
Police searched the house.
Behind the stove, they found the ledger and a row of photographs documenting every pregnancy.
Dates.
Fetal sex.
Injuries.
Losses.
All male.
All connected to Luke’s assaults.
My doctor’s later statement became undeniable.
I had never been infertile.
Luke had killed my pregnancies before birth.
The ledger also showed Margaret’s motive was older than money.
A family prophecy—treated as tradition, not law—claimed the first surviving son of the women’s bloodline would end male control of the estate.
Margaret feared losing the system that made her powerful.
She had once been controlled by Brooks men.
Instead of dismantling the system, she became its gatekeeper.
Then police found a final photograph.
Margaret holding Luke as a newborn.
The hospital band listed his mother as Caroline Brooks.
Margaret was not Luke’s biological mother.
The first Caroline’s mother was.
Luke had married women who were biologically related to him.
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The family had hidden generations of reproductive abuse.
Read Chapter 11 to discover how Luke reacted when he learned the truth about his birth.
