PART 3: The Secret in the Blood
Elena shook her head frantically, tears finally spilling over her cheeks. “No… no, my mother was a schoolteacher! She raised me alone in Chicago! I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Saint Jude Memorial,” Arthur whispered, his mind racing through twenty-four years of buried memories. “Twenty-four years ago… Evelyn gave birth to twins. A boy… and a girl.”
Julian froze. The room went deathly silent.
“Twins?” Julian whispered, his voice pitching high with sudden, sickening dread. “Dad… what are you talking about? I don’t have a twin. Mom only had me.”
“That’s what she told me!” Arthur yelled, his voice breaking into a sob as he collapsed onto the bottom step, clutching his head in his hands. “Evelyn came home from the hospital with only you, Julian! She told me the baby girl was stillborn! She said the doctors took her away before I arrived from my business trip!”
Arthur looked up at Elena, his face a mask of absolute ruin.
“Evelyn didn’t lose the baby,” Arthur confessed, the dark truth finally coming to light after two decades of silence. “She knew I was having an affair back then. She knew our marriage was over, and she knew I would take both children in the divorce using my fortune and lawyers. So she paid the attending nurse—the woman who raised you—to take the baby girl away. She gave her the locket so that one day, when she was gone, you would find your way back.”
Elena backed away toward the front door, her chest heaving, her mind refusing to accept the nightmare. “No… no, this isn’t real. This is a mistake!”
“Look at the picture, Julian!” Arthur wept, holding out the locket toward his son. “Look at the intake stamp! Look at her face! She has your mother’s eyes!”
