Chapter 7 - The Brother in the Dark
My mind spun into complete vertigo. "Thomas? That's impossible. Thomas cut ties with the family years ago. He moved to the UK to get away from Mother."
"Did he?" Marcus asked quietly. "Because according to Homeland Security border tracking, Thomas Vance entered the country through JFK four days before Lauren’s wedding. He rented a car in Savannah, Georgia, under an alias, and drove straight into Charleston."
My father entered the clinic room at that moment, carrying two paper cups of tea. He caught the tail end of Marcus’s words, and the cups slipped from his hands, spilling dark liquid across the pristine linoleum.
"What did you just say about my son?" Arthur asked, his voice shaking violently.
"Arthur, sit down," Marcus said, rising to guide my father into an armchair before his legs gave out. "Thomas is back in the country. And he was directly involved in routing the logistics for the attack on Claire."
"Why?" I cried out, the physical pain of my burns swallowed by an overwhelming tide of betrayal. "Lauren hated me because I didn't worship her! Mother resented me because I looked like Dad’s mother! But Thomas? Thomas and I were best friends when we were children! He taught me how to sketch! He protected me when Eleanor locked me in the cellar for tracking mud on her carpets!"
"People change when millions of dollars are on the line, Claire," Marcus said, handing Arthur a bottle of water. "Grandmother Vance’s trust had a survival clause. If Arthur passed away, the coastal estate and the historic properties were set to be divided equally among all three children—unless one of the children was convicted of a felony or deemed incapacitated by permanent injury."
I stared at Marcus, the puzzle pieces clicking together with devastating clarity.
"If I was disfigured and incapacitated," I whispered, "and Lauren went to prison for doing it..."
"Lauren would forfeit her share under the trust’s moral turpitude clause," Marcus finished grimly. "And you, permanently disabled or institutionalized by trauma, would have your conservatorship handed over to the sole remaining functional heir."
"Thomas," my father croaked, burying his face in his trembling hands. "Thomas gets the entire sixty-million-dollar land portfolio. All of it."
"Lauren thought she was playing David and Eleanor," Marcus said, leaning in. "Eleanor thought she was playing Robert. But Thomas was pulling the strings on all of them from the shadows. He fed Lauren the idea that you were going to seduce David. He planted the rumor that you had forged the deed to the cottage."
A cold, steely calm settled over me. The tears stopped. The burning in my neck turned from an agonized throb into a searing reminder of the war I had been dragged into.
They had tried to take my face. They had tried to take my sanity. They had tried to take my birthright.
"Where is he, Marcus?" I asked, my voice dropping to a low, lethal register.
"We traced the burner phone he used to contact Dr. Sterling," Marcus replied, checking his watch. "The ping died near the barrier islands. Out by the old salt marshes near Grandfather's old hunting cabin."
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"He thinks he’s safe out there," Arthur said, lifting his head. His eyes, usually clouded by defeat, were now blazing with a fury I had never seen in him. "He forgot who built that cabin with his own two hands."
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