Chapter 3 - The Blood-Red Seal
The stranger’s words hung in the stale air of the vestry like a physical blow. Julian’s hand tightened around the brass door handle until his knuckles turned stark white. He blocked the doorway with his broad frame, shielding Lily and the infant from view.
“Who sent you?” Julian demanded, his voice dropping an octave into a dangerous rumble. “Identify yourself, or I guarantee you won’t make it out of this hallway on your own two feet.”
The man in the charcoal suit didn’t flinch. He simply raised his hand and slid the manila envelope across the polished wooden floor until it stopped against Julian’s polished leather shoe. “The dead don’t send messages, Mr. Vance. But the people who buried them do. Open the envelope. You will find that your entire empire was built on a foundation of stolen blood and silenced witnesses.”
Eleanor rushed forward, kicking the envelope aside as if it were a venomous snake. Her face was pale, devoid of the radiant bridal glow she had worn just an hour ago. “Don’t touch it, Julian! It’s a setup! A coordinated extortion attempt by your disgruntled ex-business partners to ruin our merger! Call security and throw this lunatic out!”
Julian looked down at the envelope, then up at the stranger, whose expression remained chillingly impassive. Without breaking eye contact, Julian bent down, scooped up the manila package, and tore the red wax seal open with his bare thumb. Inside lay a single photograph and a handwritten note scrawled in ink so old it had turned brown.
He pulled the photograph out, and the breath evacuated his lungs as if he had been struck in the chest with a sledgehammer. It was a picture of a hospital maternity ward dated twelve years ago. In the frame, a younger version of Julian stood beside a nurse holding two infants wrapped in identical pink blankets. But Julian only had one daughter—Lily.
“Twins,” Julian whispered, his voice trembling as the horrifying realization crashed over him. He looked down at the baby sleeping peacefully in the pink blanket, then back at Lily. “My God… they told me the second twin didn’t survive the birth complications.”
The stranger in the charcoal suit smiled faintly, a cold, humorless twitch of the lips. “The Vance family never loses an asset, Mr. Vance. We merely reallocate them. But now, someone within your inner circle is trying to sell the surviving twin to your fiercest corporate rival.”
Julian spun around to face Eleanor, his eyes blazing with a fury that made her gasp. “You knew,” Julian snarled, taking a threatening step toward his bride. “You were on the hospital board back then. You were the one who managed the birth records.”
Eleanor stumbled backward until her back hit the stone wall, her eyes wide with terror as she realized her carefully constructed web of lies was finally unraveling. “Julian, I swear to you, I didn’t know anything about the second child—!”
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Before Eleanor could finish her sentence, the single overhead light in the vestry flickered violently and plunged the room into absolute darkness.
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