Chapter 7 - The Unspooling Thread
Forty-eight hours after Delilah was removed from the estate, the Charles mansion felt less like a home and more like a mausoleum.
Beckett had left for his apartment in the city, unable to handle the guilt of how he had treated me or the horror of what Delilah had done. Mom remained confined to her rooms, under the care of a private nurse, overwhelmed by the emotional destruction of her family.
Dad spent his days in the study, drinking scotch and staring at old photographs of the day I was brought home from the hospital as a baby.
I stayed in the east wing, spending my hours systematically going through the documents I had recovered from the basement.
There was a missing link.
The documents proved Dad stopped the search for me after six months, but they didn't explain how I had ended up in the state-run residential home two hundred miles away under a false name. Someone had deliberately erased my identity before dropping me at that facility.
At three in the afternoon, my phone chimed. It was a text from an unknown number.
If you want to know who really signed your transfer papers seven years ago, come to the diner on 4th Street. Come alone.
I stared at the screen. It was obviously a trap—likely set by Delilah or someone connected to her past. But the burning need for answers outweighed any fear I had left.
I threw on a black raincoat, slipped my phone into my pocket, and left the estate through the garden gate without telling anyone.
The rain had turned into a thick, cold fog by the time I reached the industrial edge of the city. The diner on 4th Street was a dilapidated grease-trap beneath an elevated train line, its neon sign flickering erratically against the grey sky.
I pushed open the door. The smell of old coffee and burnt grease hit my nose.
Sitting in a vinyl booth at the back of the restaurant was Delilah.
She looked different. The expensive designer clothes were gone, replaced by a cheap denim jacket and messy hair. But her eyes were still sharp, burning with an intense, bitter malice.
I walked over and sat down in the booth across from her, keeping my hands visible on the table.
"You actually came," Delilah sneered, leaning back against the red vinyl. "No bodyguards? No daddy to protect you?"
I pulled out my phone and typed a single line.
Who signed the papers?
Delilah laughed, a cold, mocking sound. "Always straight to the point. You know, for a girl who doesn't speak, you sure cause a lot of trouble."
She reached into her jacket, pulled out a yellowed piece of paper, and laid it on the table between us, keeping her hand pressed firmly over it.
"Your father didn't just stop looking for you, Rory," Delilah whispered, leaning across the table, her breath smelling of cheap cigarettes. "He paid someone to make sure you were never found. Because if you came back while his merger with the Sterling Group was going through, the scandal of your abduction by a disgruntled former employee would have bankrupted him."
My heart stopped. "A former employee?"
"Your beloved Agnes," Delilah dropped the bomb with a twisted smile. "Her brother was the one who took you. And your father paid Agnes to keep her mouth shut and hide you in that home so the press would never connect the crime to his company’s illegal labor practices."
The air in my lungs froze.
Agnes?
The gentle, soft-spoken housekeeper who had given me the key? The only person who had stood up for me at the meeting?
"You're lying," I typed frantically, my hands shaking so hard I almost dropped the phone.
May you like
"Check the signature on the custody transfer, sweetie," Delilah hissed, sliding the yellowed paper toward me.
I looked down at the document. Dated seven years ago. At the bottom was the official seal of the Ohio Child Protective Services department, and beside the witness line was a clear, elegant signature: Agnes Miller.
