Chapter 18: The Warning Shot

I drove back to my apartment, but not to sleep. I needed to pack. Not a getaway bag—I wasn't running—but a siege kit. I threw clothes into a duffel bag with jerky movements, my mind replaying the conversation in the study. Edith had taken the birth certificate. She had taken the only tangible proof I had. But she hadn't taken the knowledge.

And she hadn't taken the doubt.

When I walked into my living room, the lights were off. I reached for the switch, but a voice stopped me.

"Don't turn it on, Sarah."

I froze. The voice came from the armchair by the window.

"Mark?" I asked, my hand hovering over the switch plate.

"I said don't turn it on."

I lowered my hand. My eyes adjusted to the gloom. Mark was sitting in the dark, a silhouette against the streetlights filtering through the blinds. He wasn't holding a drink, which was unusual. He was holding a file folder.

"How did you get in?" I asked.

"I still have a key. From when you had Leo. Remember? You were so exhausted you gave keys to everyone just in case you collapsed."

"What do you want, Mark?"

He stood up. Even in the dark, I could see the tension in his shoulders. He walked toward me, stopping just outside my personal space.

"Mom told me you came over tonight. She said you were... agitated."

"I was telling the truth," I said. "Something nobody in this family seems capable of doing."

"She said you found something in the wall. A piece of paper."

"A birth certificate," I corrected. "For Leo Sterling. Born June 14, 1988."

Mark went still. "Leo Sterling?"

"That's right. Clara's son. The one Edith stole. The one she replaced with me."

Mark let out a breath, a sharp hiss of air. He tossed the file folder onto the coffee table. It landed with a slap.

"She told me about that," he said. "About Clara's baby. She said he died."

"He didn't die," I said. "He's alive. I saw the intake forms. I saw the checks she wrote to the doctor."

"You saw the intake forms?" Mark asked. His voice was strange. Tight.

"Yes. Baby Girl Doe. That's me, Mark. I'm a foundling. Edith bought me to replace the nephew she kidnapped."

Mark laughed. It was a dry, humorless sound.

"You really think that's what happened?" he asked. "You think she bought a random baby to cover up a kidnapping?"

"It's the only thing that makes sense."

"Is it?" Mark stepped closer. "Or is it just the story that makes *you* the victim?"

I stepped back. "What are you talking about?"

"You think you're the only one she lied to?" he whispered. "You think you're the only one who doesn't fit?"

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He tapped the screen and held it up to my face.

It wasn't a photo. It was a DNA test result.

*Subject: Mark Sterling.*
*Paternal Lineage: Unknown.*
*Maternal Lineage: No Match to Edith Sterling.*

I stared at the screen. The blue light washed out his face, making him look ghostly.

"She's not my mother either, Sarah," he said. "I'm adopted. Just like you."

"But... the will," I stammered. "The first grandchild born of her body. She needed a biological heir."

"She needed an heir," Mark agreed. "She didn't need biology. She just needed everyone to *think* it was biology. That's why she wore the padding. That's why she faked the pregnancy."

"But if you're adopted... and I'm adopted..."

"Then where is the real baby?" Mark asked. "Where is Clara's son?"

He picked up the file folder from the table and shoved it into my hands.

"I found this in her safe two years ago," he said. "I've been sitting on it, waiting for the right time. Waiting for leverage."

I opened the folder. Inside was a single sheet of paper. A transfer of custody form from a private agency in Canada.

*Child: Male Infant.*
*DOB: June 14, 1988.*
*Transfer to: The Sanctuary, Montreal.*

"She didn't keep him," Mark said. "She didn't raise him in the basement or hide him in the attic. She shipped him off. She got rid of the evidence."

I looked at the paper. *The Sanctuary.*

"She exiled him," I whispered.

"And she replaced him with us," Mark said. "Two decoys. One to be the Golden Boy, the heir apparent who would never actually inherit because he wasn't blood. And one to be the scapegoat, the poor relation, the distraction."

He looked at me, his eyes dark with a lifetime of resentment.

"We're not family, Sarah," he said. "We're props. We're just furniture she bought to fill up her empty house."

"Why are you telling me this now?" I asked.

"Because she's making a move," Mark said. "She's liquidating assets. She's moving money offshore. She's planning to cut us both loose."

He leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.

"We just want what's best for Leo," he said, echoing Edith's words from the hospital. "Even if that means he lives with us."

"With us?"

"You and me," Mark said. "We take her down. We expose the fraud. We claim the estate as the victims of her scheme. And we split it."

I looked at him. At the desperation in his eyes. He wasn't doing this for justice. He was doing it for the money. He was just another shark, smaller than Edith but just as hungry.

"I don't want the money," I said. "I just want my son to live."

"Then you need the money," Mark said. "Because without it, the treatment stops next week."

He turned to leave, pausing at the door.

"Think about it, Sarah. We're the only family we have. Even if it's all a lie."

He walked out, leaving me alone in the dark with a folder that proved my entire existence was a fabrication.

But as I looked at the custody form again, at the address in Montreal, a cold realization settled in my gut.

If Edith had shipped Clara's son away