Chapter 10 - The Girl in Charles’s Photograph
Vanessa stared at the photograph as if it were a body rising from the floor.
Adrian picked it up.
“You knew my father when you were a teenager.”
“No.”
“The picture is clear.”
“It’s not me.”
The resemblance was undeniable.
Same eyes.
Same narrow chin.
Same small scar near the left eyebrow, now concealed beneath makeup.
Richard moved toward the hidden compartment.
The guards stopped him again.
“What is her real name?” I asked.
He did not answer.
Margaret opened the metal box with the key found taped beneath its lid.
Inside were old corporate ledgers, cassette tapes, and a birth certificate.
The name read:
VANESSA MARIE HALE.
I looked at her.
Hale.
My maiden name.
The same surname as my late husband’s medical consultant files and a family branch I had barely discussed.
Adrian read the parents listed.
Mother: Rebecca Hale.
Father: Unknown.
Rebecca was my younger cousin.
She disappeared from the family when I was in my thirties after accusing Richard of misusing trust funds. Everyone said she ran away with a married man.
Vanessa’s face had gone white.
“You are Rebecca’s daughter,” I said.
“She abandoned me.”
“Did Richard raise you?”
“He paid for schools.”
Richard’s voice sharpened.
“That is enough.”
“No,” Vanessa said. “It isn’t.”
She turned toward him with years of hatred finally visible.
“You told me Evelyn helped destroy my mother.”
“I told you the family rejected Rebecca.”
“You said Evelyn signed the papers that took everything from us.”
I looked at the old ledgers.
“What papers?”
Margaret opened one.
A court settlement transferred Rebecca’s trust share to a holding company controlled by Richard.
My signature appeared as witness.
Again, not mine.
The forgery dated back thirty-eight years.
Richard had been using my identity long before Charles died.
Vanessa looked at me.
“My mother spent her final years in cheap apartments while you lived here.”
“I never knew.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Yes.”
Her anger wavered.
For the first time, uncertainty entered it.
Richard had shaped her entire life around a false enemy.
He introduced her to Adrian knowing she carried resentment toward me. He paid her to control the estate. He allowed her to believe taking my property was justice.
Her cruelty remained hers.
But the target had been chosen for her.
Adrian lowered the birth certificate.
“Did you marry me for revenge?”
“At first.”
The answer landed quietly.
He looked as if he had expected a lie and was wounded by honesty instead.
“What changed?”
Vanessa looked away.
“Nothing that matters now.”
I sensed it did matter.
Perhaps she had loved him in some damaged way.
Perhaps she had only become addicted to the life he gave her.
Either possibility made her more dangerous, not less.
Margaret examined the cassette labels.
One read REBECCA—STATEMENT.
Another read CHARLES—FINAL INSTRUCTIONS.
Richard’s control finally broke.
He lunged for the box.
The guards restrained him, but he knocked the tapes onto the floor.
Vanessa dove at the same time.
Adrian caught her around the waist.
She fought viciously, reaching for the cassette labeled Rebecca.
I reached from the bench and pulled it beneath my hand.
Richard shouted, “Do not play that.”
His panic confirmed its value.
The forensic accountant produced a portable cassette reader from one of the evidence cases.
Margaret inserted the tape.
Static filled the foyer.
Then a young woman’s voice began.
“My name is Rebecca Hale, and if Evelyn ever hears this, she needs to know Richard is not Charles’s brother.”
The tape warped.
A loud mechanical squeal replaced her voice.
The accountant removed it quickly.
The ribbon had been cut and rejoined with clear adhesive.
Someone had edited the original recording.
Inside the cassette shell, however, was a folded strip of paper.
Margaret opened it.
A handwritten message appeared in Charles’s writing:
ASK ADRIAN WHO HIS REAL FATHER IS.
No one moved.
Adrian looked at me.
May you like
And I realized he already knew.
📖 Find out why Charles questioned Adrian’s paternity—and what Evelyn’s son had discovered before staging his betrayal of Vanessa—in CHAPTER 11. 👇
