Chapter 2 - Secrets in the Solitude
By midnight, Claire had been transferred to a private ICU room, stabilized but still deeply unconscious. Lucas and Owen had finally fallen asleep in the adjacent waiting room under the watchful eye of my head of security, Marcus.
I sat in the plastic chair beside Claire's bed, the steady beep-beep-beep of the heart monitor the only sound in the room. Without the crisp housekeeper's uniform and the tightly bound hair, she looked painfully young, her face framed by soft, dark curls that were the exact shade and texture of Evelyn’s.
"Why didn't you tell me?" I whispered to the quiet room, reaching out to touch her pale, cold fingers. "Why didn't Evelyn ever mention you?"
The door opened quietly, and Marcus stepped inside. He held a small, weathered leather duffel bag. "Mr. Whitmore, I went to the staff quarters at the estate to secure her personal belongings, as you requested. I found this hidden beneath the floorboards of her closet. I think you need to see it."
I took the bag, unzipping it to find a stack of old medical bills, a half-empty bottle of expensive medication, and a thick, velvet-bound journal. I opened the journal. The first page was dated six years ago, written in Evelyn’s unmistakable, elegant cursive script.
May you like
Tears, hot and blinding, blurred my vision. Evelyn had found her secret sister just months before her own diagnosis. She had tried to bridge the gap, but the trust fund had been swallowed up by the massive corporate restructuring and legal battles that followed Evelyn’s death—battles led by my own estranged father, Silas Whitmore, who had handled her estate before I took absolute control of Whitmore Enterprises.
Claire hadn't come to extort me. She had been left penniless, her health failing, trying to fulfill a promise to a sister she had barely gotten to know. And I had treated her like an invisible fixture in my house.
