Chapter 13 - Beneath the Chapel Floor.
Charles Vale's surprise lasted only a second.
Then he smiled again.
"My daughter finally learned how to lie."
Margaret held the brass key between two fingers.
"You trained me well."
Charles ordered a guard to take it.
Margaret let him.
That was part of the plan.
What Charles did not know was that Ethan had photographed the key at the Hale estate and discovered a manufacturer's mark on its stem.
It belonged to a nineteenth-century lock system used throughout Blackwood House.
The chapel was the obvious destination.
Charles marched them across a covered stone walkway while rain battered the windows.
Rebecca was forced along behind them.
Claire watched every doorway and counted every guard.
Four inside the house.
Two outside.
At least one near the gate.
The chapel stood at the edge of the cliff.
It was small, dark, and lined with carved wooden saints whose faces had been worn smooth by salt air.
Charles inserted the key into a narrow lock beneath the altar.
Nothing happened.
He tried again.
"Wrong lock?" Ethan asked.
Charles glared at him.
Claire remembered Thomas's words precisely.
The master ledger is kept beneath the chapel floor.
Not beneath the altar.
She looked down.
A crescent moon had been carved into one stone tile near the center aisle.
Her pulse quickened.
Charles followed her eyes.
He saw it too.
"Move the rug."
A guard rolled back the faded runner.
The crescent tile contained a tiny keyhole.
The brass key fit.
A section of stone lifted with a mechanical click.
Beneath it was a steel compartment.
Charles's hands trembled with excitement.
He opened the lid.
Inside rested a thick black ledger wrapped in oilcloth.
For the first time, Claire understood what greed looked like when it was stronger than age.
Charles forgot everyone else in the room.
He knelt and pulled the ledger free.
Names filled the pages.
Amounts.
Dates.
Hospitals.
Children.
Thousands of stolen lives reduced to columns of handwriting.
Rebecca began crying silently.
"You kept all of them."
Charles stood.
"I kept records."
"You kept trophies," Claire said.
His eyes hardened.
"Careful."
"My father died trying to expose you."
"Your father died because he confused morality with power."
Margaret's face changed.
The performance ended.
"You murdered Thomas."
Charles looked at her with irritation rather than guilt.
"I saved you from him."
Margaret struck him across the face.
One guard immediately grabbed her.
Charles touched his cheek.
"There she is."
Ethan moved toward Margaret, but another guard raised a weapon.
Claire stepped between them.
"You wanted the ledger. You have it. Let Rebecca go."
Charles laughed.
"You still don't understand."
He turned the ledger around.
Several recent pages had been added.
The dates were from the past five years.
The network had never ended.
Claire felt her blood run cold.
"You're still selling children."
"I no longer handle operations personally."
Charles looked at David, who had just appeared in the chapel doorway.
Everyone turned.
David held his hands up.
A guard stood behind him.
Claire's heart sank.
"Dad?"
Claire photographed several pages in her mind before Charles could close the book.
She recognized hospital names from three states and dates recent enough to prove that children had been moved through the network while she and Ethan were planning their wedding.
The discovery turned the confrontation from a family reckoning into an emergency.
Somewhere, other parents might still be searching for children who had been told they were dead.
David's face was bruised.
"I'm sorry."
Charles smiled.
"Mr. Bennett has been useful to me before."
Claire stared at the man who raised her.
May you like
Then Charles delivered the cruelest line yet.
"Ask him who has managed my accounts for the last twenty-three years."
