CHAPTER 14 : The Other Child
Claire traced Celeste’s message to a closed maternity clinic owned by one of Charles’s shell companies.
Inside, she found abandoned nurseries containing dozens of empty cribs.
Each crib had a metal number attached to it.
No names.
No dates.
In an office, Claire discovered files showing that Noah had not been the only infant delivered under false records.
At least seventeen children had been assigned new identities through Ashford-funded hospitals.
Some had grown up inside wealthy families.
Others had disappeared from official systems.
One file contained Claire’s own childhood photograph.
Another contained Celeste’s.
The final folder was marked with Daniel’s name.
Inside was a birth certificate showing Daniel Ashford had a daughter.
The mother’s name had been erased.
The child would now be seven years old.
Claire remembered Daniel’s unexplained trips during the year before Noah’s birth.
Had her husband hidden another family?
Or had someone created another false identity to control him?
A television turned on in the nursery.
Celeste appeared on the screen with Victoria sitting beside her.
Neither woman seemed restrained.
“You have spent weeks asking whether Daniel is alive,” Celeste said. “You should be asking which Daniel you married.”
Claire stared at the screen.
Celeste explained that Project Mirror had begun before Daniel met Claire.
Charles had trained a second man to copy Daniel’s voice, behavior, and appearance for private negotiations.
“Sometimes the man who returned home to you was Daniel,” Celeste said. “Sometimes he was not.”
Claire felt physically ill.
“That is impossible.”
“Think about the nights he forgot conversations. The sudden changes in his handwriting. The scar that appeared and disappeared.”
Claire remembered.
There had been moments.
Small inconsistencies she had blamed on stress.
“Where is Noah?”
“With someone who has protected him longer than you have.”
“Who?”
Victoria leaned toward the camera.
“Margaret.”
Claire froze.
Her biological mother had supposedly vanished more than thirty years earlier.
Celeste looked over her shoulder.
A woman entered the frame.
She was in her late sixties with dark hair streaked silver.
Her eyes looked exactly like Claire’s.
Margaret Vale placed a hand on Victoria’s shoulder.
“Come to the train terminal at midnight,” she said. “Bring Daniel’s ring.”
The screen went black.
Claire looked down at the ring she had recovered from Room 1708.
An inscription had appeared inside the band.
May you like
Words that had not been there before.
ONE OF US NEVER LEFT.
