Chapter 30: Two Babies in the Blue Room
The original Aster House was not the Cross mansion.
It was a private estate hidden in the mountains, registered under a medical charity.
My mother recognized the address.
Thomas had taken her there before I was born.
Detective Ellis organized a tactical team, but Claire and I entered first.
Thomas had threatened to harm Nicholas if he saw police vehicles.
The house appeared abandoned.
Its front door stood open.
Inside, white asters covered the floor.
A voice directed us toward the second level.
We entered a blue nursery.
Two cribs stood beneath the windows.
Noah slept in one.
Nicholas slept in the other.
I ran toward Noah.
A glass wall lowered from the ceiling, separating us from the children.
Claire grabbed my arm before I struck it.
“Thomas!” she shouted.
An elderly man stepped from the shadows on the other side.
He walked with a cane.
His silver hair was neatly combed.
He did not look like a monster.
That made him more terrifying.
My mother entered behind us.
She had followed despite Ellis’s orders.
Thomas smiled when he saw her.
“Isabelle.”
She stared at him.
“You should be dead.”
“I allowed you to believe I was.”
He looked at Claire and me.
“My daughters.”
“We are not yours,” Claire said.
“You are biologically mine. Legally mine. Financially essential.”
I pressed my hands against the glass.
“Give me Noah.”
“Which one is Noah?”
I looked between the two cribs.
“What are you talking about?”
Thomas lifted a folder.
“The children were exchanged twice during the first forty-eight hours after birth.”
“That is a lie.”
“Is it?”
“Noah began crying.
Nicholas woke moments later.
They looked almost identical.
Thomas activated a monitor.
Two genetic reports appeared.
Both identified me as the biological mother.
Neither listed Adrian as the father.
The paternal section had been sealed by court order.
“Who is their father?” I asked.
Thomas smiled.
“That depends on which report is authentic.”
Claire stepped forward.
“What do you want?”
“The original Arden succession requires two living female heirs to confirm the next trustee.”
“You need our signatures,” she said.
“I need your choice.”
“What choice?”
Thomas pointed toward the cribs.
“One child inherits the trust.”
“And the other?”
“Is legally erased.”
My mother struck the glass.
“You will not touch either of them.”
Thomas looked at her with the same calm expression he had probably worn decades earlier.
“You made this necessary when you ran.”
Sirens sounded in the distance.
Detective Ellis’s team had reached the estate.
Thomas did not appear concerned.
A red light activated above the nursery door.
The cribs began moving backward along tracks in the floor.
“No!” I screamed.
The wall behind them opened.
Adrian stood in the hidden passage.
His hands were bound.
He looked at me desperately.
“Elena, listen to me.”
“Stop the cribs!”
“I can’t.”
“Which one is Noah?”
Adrian stared at the two babies.
“I don’t know.”
Thomas pressed a control on his cane.
The lights flickered.
The glass wall began descending into the floor.
Claire prepared to run toward the children.
Then my mother grabbed my hand.
“Elena, there is something I never told Victor.”
I looked at her.
She was staring at Thomas.
“There were not two babies in the delivery room the night you were born.”
Thomas’s smile disappeared.
My mother tightened her grip on my hand.
“There were three.”
A gunshot sounded downstairs.
The nursery lights went black.
One baby began crying.
Then the second.
From somewhere inside the hidden passage, a third child started screaming.
And Thomas Arden whispered through the darkness.
May you like
“Now the family is finally complete.”
TO BE CONTINUED
