Chapter 4 - THE BROTHER WHO LIVED MY LIFE
Daniel contacted Hayes before police found him.
He offered Laura’s location in exchange for immunity.
Rebecca Sloan, a federal prosecutor, joined the case and refused full protection.
Daniel surrendered at an empty train station.
Seeing him felt like looking at a damaged version of myself.
Same height.
Same eyes.
A scar crossed his jaw.
He wore my missing wedding ring on a chain around his neck.
Margaret had raised Daniel inside private institutions. She told him my father rejected him because he was weak.
Then she showed him photographs of my childhood.
My birthdays.
My graduation.
My wedding.
Every ordinary moment became evidence that I had stolen the life he deserved.
When Laura began investigating Greenvale, Margaret gave Daniel a role.
Pretend to be me.
Convince Laura she could not trust her own memory.
Enter our house.
Move objects.
Send messages.
Appear outside windows.
Then tell doctors she suffered delusions.
Daniel claimed he never hurt the children.
He helped Ethan unlock the basement gate but could not remove Laura before Margaret’s staff arrived.
“Where is she now?” I asked.
“My mother moved her to Saint Agnes.”
The name appeared nowhere in public databases.
Daniel said Saint Agnes was an underground maternal clinic beneath an abandoned church.
Greenvale handled inconvenient women.
Saint Agnes handled their children.
Laura discovered Margaret had arranged illegal adoptions through both facilities.
Our divorce had not begun because Laura stopped loving me.
She filed to protect the children from my family.
She believed distance from me would reduce Margaret’s access.
Margaret responded by taking her completely.
Daniel gave Hayes a route into Saint Agnes.
Federal agents entered that evening.
They found medical rooms, false birth certificates, infant bracelets, and evidence that dozens of children had been transferred.
Laura was not there.
A recent surgical schedule listed her for a procedure that morning.
The surgeon was Dr. Samuel Vale.
Judge Vale’s son.
My cousin.
The procedure involved extraction of stored embryos.
Laura and I had created embryos years earlier during fertility treatment.
We were told the remaining samples were destroyed.
Margaret had kept them.
She intended to create more Carter children under her control.
A bloodstained hospital gown lay beside the operating table.
Laura’s name was written inside the collar.
Then Daniel noticed a security image.
The silver-haired woman pushed Laura’s bed through a rear corridor.
He whispered, “That’s not one of Mother’s employees.”
“Who is she?”
“Our grandmother.”
Eleanor Vale Carter.
The family said she died twenty years earlier.
She had founded Greenvale.
Margaret was not the person above the system.
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She was the daughter still obeying its creator.
Read Chapter 5 to discover the secret Laura found about the Carter family’s children.
