Chapter 4 - The Ghost of Boston
The fluorescent lights of the interrogation room buzzed with a low, agonizing drone that matched the frantic pounding in Eleanor’s temples. She sat across the scarred metal table, her hands cuffed to a bolted loop, watching Victoria Vance slide photographs across the surface with deliberate slowness. The photos were old, yellowed polaroids recovered from a dusty archive in Massachusetts, depicting a young couple standing outside a modest brick home in the winter of 1991. Eleanor squeezed her eyes shut, wishing she could physically erase the images from existence, but the past had finally caught up to her with the weight of an avalanche.
“Recognize them?” Victoria asked, her voice calm and devoid of any human warmth. “Arthur and Beatrice Miller. Your biological parents. Or should I say, the people whose identities you stole when you were nineteen years old to secure a scholarship and slip into high society?”
Eleanor opened her eyes, glaring across the table with a hardened expression, realizing that denying it any further was completely futile. The facade was gone, burned to ash by Julian’s relentless pursuit of the truth.
“They were deadbeats who abandoned me,” Eleanor hissed, her voice dripping with suppressed venom. “I made something of myself. I clawed my way out of the gutter while they drank themselves to death in a trailer park. I earned every single thing I have!”
“You earned a prison sentence for fraud and identity theft,” Victoria corrected smoothly, flipping open another section of the file. “And that’s just the foundation of your crimes. Let’s talk about what happened to the real Eleanor Miller, whose birth certificate you used to enter college and eventually meet Julian.”
Eleanor felt a cold sweat break out across her neck. The real Eleanor Miller hadn’t been an abandonment case; she had vanished under mysterious circumstances during a backpacking trip through Canada just weeks before the university enrollment deadlines.
“She ran away to join a commune,” Eleanor muttered, though the lie sounded pathetic even to her own ears in the sterile room. “Everyone in that town knew she was unstable.”
“The Canadian Royal Mounted Police reopened her missing persons file three days ago, courtesy of Julian’s private investigators,” Victoria said, leaning forward and resting her elbows on the table. “And they found her journal buried in a storage locker registered under your maiden alias, detailing how you threatened her life over a stolen trust fund.”
Eleanor stared at the lawyer in absolute horror. Julian hadn't just discovered her petty deceptions; he had unearthed a murder investigation, transforming her domestic battle into a nightmare from which there was no legal escape.
“Julian wouldn’t do this,” Eleanor pleaded, her voice cracking as a genuine tear finally tracked down her cheek. “We loved each other. We built a life together!”
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“He loved a ghost,” Victoria said, standing up and packing her files away. “And as of ten minutes ago, he signed the paperwork to sell your childhood home and freeze every single bank account you ever touched.”
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