Chapter 6 - THE WOMAN IN ROOM NINE
Hospital records led us to a long-term care facility owned by the Vale Foundation.
Room Nine held a woman under the name Clara Stone.
She had severe facial scarring from reconstructive surgery after a car fire.
Her fingerprints matched Caroline.
My wife had survived the crash.
Lenora identified another woman’s body as hers and placed Caroline under a false guardianship.
Samuel kept her sedated for three years.
Caroline opened her eyes when I entered.
For a long moment, neither of us spoke.
Then she touched the bruise on my face.
“Mason.”
I broke.
I pressed my forehead against her hand and cried in a way I had not cried at her funeral.
She apologized for hiding Jonah.
I told her the apology belonged to the people who took him.
Caroline had tried to tell me during pregnancy, but Lenora controlled her calls and medication.
After Julian’s birth, she secretly visited Jonah.
She recorded evidence.
When Samuel began fracturing Julian’s bones, Caroline confronted Lenora.
The crash followed.
She remembered waking inside Room Nine and hearing Lenora say that children required obedient mothers.
Caroline knew the vault code.
But not the location of the key.
Samuel had one half.
Julian had broken the other beneath his fingernail while trying to stop Lenora from opening it.
“What is inside?” I asked.
“The original research ledger.”
“And why does Samuel need me there?”
Caroline’s eyes filled with fear.
“Because the vault does not open with the code alone.”
Henry Vale, Lenora’s late husband, had designed it to require a biometric sample from the twins’ biological father.
My blood.
Samuel needed me.
The treatment threat was leverage.
Then Caroline said something worse.
“The ledger lists every child.”
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“How many?”
“Julian and Jonah were not the first twins.”
