Chapter 16 - THE WOMAN WHO SAVED HER AND BETRAYED HER
Elena wanted a simple answer.
Villain.
Victim.
Enemy.
Ally.
Sabrina gave her none.
She had helped Victor access confidential information.
She had helped create the conditions that put Elena in danger.
Then, when she realized Victor was moving toward violence, she quietly restored the emergency system that saved Elena and her baby.
“Why didn't you warn me?”
Elena asked.
Sabrina's answer came through tears.
“Because then I would have had to admit what I had done.”
Elena looked at her cousin with disgust.
“So you protected yourself until the last possible second.”
“Yes.”
The honesty hurt more than another excuse.
Alvin stepped forward.
“Where is the birth file?”
“I don't know.”
Sabrina looked at him.
“But Peter knew.”
Alvin froze.
“My father wrote something before he died.”
She opened her handbag.
Security officers tensed.
Sabrina slowly removed an old envelope.
The paper was yellowed.
Across the front were two words.
For Alvin.
“I found this after my mother died.”
Alvin stared at it.
“I couldn't open it.”
“Why bring it now?”
“Because Victor is still looking for something.”
“And I think my father knew where it was.”
Alvin opened the envelope.
Inside was a single handwritten page.
Peter admitted stealing money.
He admitted Victor encouraged him.
He admitted Alvin tried to protect him from prosecution.
Sabrina began crying before Alvin finished.
Everything Victor had told her was a lie.
Her revenge had been built on the man who had actually manipulated her father.
At the bottom of the letter was one final sentence.
“The original Keane records are where Alvin taught us that ice remembers everything.”
Alvin read it again.
Elena frowned.
“What does that mean?”
Alvin knew.
When they were young, Alvin and Peter spent winters at an old family property near Lake Grantham.
Their father kept important documents inside a fireproof metal case beneath the floor of an abandoned icehouse.
It had been a family joke.
Ice remembers everything.
The property had not been used in decades.
Alvin called investigators.
They were too late.
A motion sensor at the old property had activated twenty minutes earlier.
Someone was already there.
Police approached from two roads.
Alvin was ordered to stay away.
Elena was ordered to remain home.
Neither argued.
At 8:42 p.m., officers entered the icehouse.
They found the floor opened.
The metal case was gone.
They also found blood.
Not much.
But enough.
A second trail led toward the trees.
Thirty yards away, they found Dr. Samuel Keller alive.
His hands had been bound.
He had been beaten badly.
Before the ambulance took him away, he gave investigators one name.
“Victor.”
Then another.
“Brenna.”
Elena listened to the call on speaker.
Claire looked at her.
“Brenna told us Victor handled the medication.”
Elena nodded.
“And Keller just connected Brenna directly to Victor.”
The story was changing again.
Brenna had confessed enough to appear useful.
But perhaps usefulness had been another performance.
Minutes later, detectives went to arrest her.
Her house was empty.
On the kitchen counter lay a photograph of Elena's ultrasound.
May you like
Across it, someone had written four words.
YOU SHOULD HAVE SIGNED.
