Chapter 4 - Sophie’s Blue Box Changes Everything
The blue box was hidden beneath a loose floorboard in Caroline’s study.
Inside were emergency cash, copied passports, a flash drive, and an old
biometric enrollment card containing Ethan’s fingerprints.
Vanessa insisted she had been looking for a photograph, not the card.
The photograph, she said, connected the illegal transfers to a woman
named Rebecca.
Ethan had never heard the name.
Margaret had.
She sat down and whispered that Rebecca was her first child—a daughter
Thomas told her had died shortly after birth when Margaret was
seventeen.
The flash drive proved Rebecca had lived.
She had been adopted under another name and later worked as a forensic
systems consultant for Halcyon.
Rebecca eventually discovered Thomas was her biological father.
At first she stole from accounts she believed represented the
inheritance Thomas had denied her.
Later she realized some of the money belonged to children, including
Sophie, and tried to return it.
Daniel Cross, the Whitmore family attorney, discovered what she was
doing and threatened her into continuing his schemes.
A video on Caroline’s drive showed Rebecca standing beside Caroline.
Rebecca confessed her role and warned Ethan that Vanessa was not the
most dangerous person involved.
“Fear Daniel Cross.”
Ethan’s blood went cold.
Cross had drafted Sophie’s trust, handled Julian’s supposed death, and
sat beside Ethan at Caroline’s funeral.
He was downstairs with police at that very moment.
Ethan quietly warned the lead detective not to let Cross leave.
Too late.
Cross had slipped through a service exit.
Then Sophie revealed Caroline had shown her an old tunnel beneath the
study.
Police entered it.
Halfway through, they found Cross’s dropped phone.
A message appeared on the screen:
DID YOU GET THE GIRL?
Another followed.
REBECCA IS ALIVE.
A woman stepped from the darkness ahead.
May you like
Ethan recognized his own features in her face.
His sister Rebecca had finally come home.
