Chapter 2 - The East Wing
Samuel knew every corridor of Kincaid House, but Catherine knew which ones his mother had forgotten.
They crossed the frozen rose garden and entered through a servants' door hidden beneath the eastern terrace.
The passage beyond it smelled of dust, coal, and old wood.
Samuel held the baby against his chest while Catherine leaned against the wall, struggling to breathe.
"Can you walk?"
"I walked six miles to get here."
"That is not what I asked."
She looked at him as if kindness had become a language she no longer trusted.
"Yes."
They moved through the dark passage as footsteps and raised voices echoed from the main floor.
Daria was telling the guards that an unstable stranger had attacked her son.
The lie came smoothly.
It had probably been prepared years ago.
Samuel led Catherine into an unused nursery in the east wing.
The room had once belonged to him.
Daria rarely entered it because it contained too many reminders of the husband she had spent decades resenting.
Samuel locked the door and placed the baby in an old cradle lined with blankets from a cabinet.
The child opened her eyes.
Gray.
Exactly like his.
"What is her name?"
"Penelope."
Samuel repeated it softly.
The baby stared at him without fear and closed one tiny hand around his finger.
His throat tightened.
Catherine watched him from across the room.
She looked ready to cry, but no tears came.
"How old is she?"
"Thirteen months."
Samuel calculated the dates.
Catherine had been nearly eight weeks pregnant when her car burned.
"You did not know?"
"I was going to tell you the night I disappeared."
Catherine removed her wet coat.
Beneath it, she wore a thin sweater several sizes too large.
Dark bruises circled her wrists.
Samuel stared at them.
"Who did that?"
"There were many of them."
"Names."
"Samuel, listen to me."
"I asked for names."
"And I am telling you that names will get us killed if you start hunting people before you understand what your mother built."
Her voice remained low, but the force in it silenced him.
Catherine crossed to the window and looked through a slit in the curtains.
The black SUV had entered the grounds.
Two men in dark coats were speaking with Daria near the front steps.
One was broad-shouldered and bald.
The other wore a physician's black leather gloves.
Catherine stepped back from the window.
"Dr. Weston."
Samuel recognized the name.
Elias Weston had signed Catherine's dental identification report.
He had also prescribed Samuel sedatives during the worst months after the funeral.
"The doctor who identified your body."
"The doctor who drugged me in the ambulance."
Samuel felt the room tilt.
"Tell me everything."
Catherine sat beside the cradle.
Her hands shook in her lap.
"I left your office that night because your mother called and said you had been in an accident."
Samuel remembered receiving dozens of calls from Catherine that evening, all after midnight, all routed to voicemail by a malfunction his technicians never explained.
"She told me to meet the ambulance near the south bridge."
"There was no accident."
"No."
"Weston was waiting."
Catherine nodded.
"He injected me before I understood what was happening."
She woke in a locked room at an estate surrounded by forest.
The windows were reinforced.
The staff called her Patient Seven.
Daria visited once every month.
At first, she demanded Catherine sign divorce papers and surrender all marital claims.
Catherine refused.
Then the pregnancy began to show.
Daria's methods changed.
"She said the baby created a second inheritance line."
Samuel frowned.
"My father's trust passes to my lawful spouse if I die without a recognized child."
"That is not the entire clause."
Catherine looked directly at him.
"If you have a child, the voting trust transfers to that child at birth, with the surviving parent as guardian."
Samuel had never seen that wording.
His mother controlled the family attorneys.
"How do you know?"
"Your father told me before he died."
The answer landed between them like a hidden blade.
"My father spoke to you privately?"
"Three days before his heart attack."
"Why did you never tell me?"
"Because he made me promise not to until he could remove Daria from the board."
Samuel turned away.
His father's sudden death had been attributed to an undiagnosed cardiac condition.
The same Dr. Weston had signed the final medical report.
A soft knock sounded at the nursery door.
Three taps.
A pause.
Two taps.
Samuel reached for the fireplace poker.
Catherine stood over the cradle.
"Who is it?"
A man's voice answered through the wood.
"The person who has been keeping Samuel alive."
Samuel recognized the voice of Arthur Vale, the mansion's eighty-year-old butler.
He opened the door a few inches.
Arthur entered carrying a tray of food, dry clothing, and an old revolver.
"Mrs. Kincaid has ordered the gates sealed," Arthur said.
"The police?"
"She has already called them."
Samuel almost laughed from disbelief.
"She called the police on herself?"
"She reported that you were suffering a psychotic break and had abducted a woman and an infant."
Catherine closed her eyes.
"She used that story before."
Arthur placed the revolver in Samuel's hand.
"There is more."
May you like
He produced a cream envelope bearing the late patriarch's seal.
"Your father instructed me to give you this only if a dead woman returned to Kincaid House."
