Chapter 4 - THE HOSPITAL FIRE
Forty-one years earlier, I entered St. Catherine’s Hospital for emergency surgery.
I was thirty-one.
Arthur and I had been trying to have another child after Marcus, but every pregnancy ended early.
Doctors told me one final procedure might save my life.
I remembered waking weak, grieving, and being told no pregnancy had survived.
Hospital records showed I delivered a premature girl.
Anna.
My daughter lived.
Arthur signed a transfer authorizing temporary care while I recovered.
Then a fire damaged the maternity wing.
Several newborn records disappeared.
The Carter family was told Anna died.
But she was placed with a foster nurse, Margaret Reed, under a sealed arrangement.
Why?
Arthur’s father feared another daughter would divide the family estate.
He pressured Arthur to hide the child.
Arthur obeyed.
Years later, he found Anna.
He began secretly supporting her.
That was how Marcus met her.
My son knew Anna was his sister before he married her.
The room spun when she said it.
Marcus had married his own hidden sister to gain control of her inheritance.
Anna learned the truth after Lily’s birth.
That was when she fled.
She did not report him because Marcus threatened to take Lily and declare Anna mentally unstable.
Arthur helped her disappear.
He protected Anna.
He concealed the crime from me.
Another man calling secrecy protection.
Then Anna opened her folder.
Inside were emails between Marcus and Rachel.
Rachel knew Anna existed.
She knew the marriage had never ended.
She knew Lily was Marcus’s child.
She married him anyway because Marcus promised the three million would become theirs after Arthur died.
The kitchen attack was not spontaneous greed.
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It was the final stage of a plan that began years earlier.
Read Chapter 5 to discover what Arthur had hidden inside the three-million-dollar account.
