Chapter 11: Aunt Victoria
Victoria Hayes arrived at the mansion wearing black.
She was Margaret’s younger sister.
Elegant.
Controlled.
The beloved aunt who had helped raise Emily after Nathan disappeared.
She had sat in the front row at the wedding.
And vanished before police locked the doors.
Margaret confronted her in Thomas’s study.
“Did you choose Laura Reed?”
Victoria did not deny it.
She poured herself a drink.
“Laura was desperate. Quiet. Financially stable. She lived far enough away.”
Emily stared at the woman who had attended every birthday.
“You knew Nathan was alive?”
“For a time.”
Margaret slapped her.
Victoria’s glass shattered on the floor.
“You watched me search for him!”
“I watched you destroy this family over a child who wasn’t even Thomas’s.”
Margaret stepped back as if struck.
Victoria had always adored Thomas.
Not romantically, she claimed.
But obsessively.
She believed Margaret had humiliated him.
When Charles proposed temporarily removing the baby, Victoria helped find a couple willing to take Nathan.
She told herself it would last two days.
Then Evelyn sold the child permanently.
“Why didn’t you bring him back when you learned the truth?” Nathan asked.
Victoria finally looked at him.
“Because Thomas begged me not to.”
“He begged you?”
“He said Margaret would leave him. He said Emily would grow up without a father.”
Emily’s face twisted.
“So you sacrificed Nathan to preserve my childhood?”
Victoria’s voice cracked.
“I thought I was saving you.”
Emily replied, “You poisoned every memory I have of you.”
Victoria reached into her handbag.
Detective Brooks drew her weapon.
But Victoria removed only a small diary.
Thomas’s diary.
Inside were entries documenting his guilt, his fear, and his growing hatred of Charles.
The final pages described Rachel’s death.
Thomas admitted following her.
He admitted ramming her car.
But he wrote that Rachel had not died at the scene.
“She was alive?” Sophie whispered.
Victoria nodded.
Thomas pulled her from the wreckage.
Rachel begged him to call an ambulance.
Instead, he called Charles.
By the time Charles arrived, she was dead.
Charles had not caused the crash.
But he had helped conceal the body and falsify the report.
Sophie closed her eyes.
Victoria then revealed the final page.
Thomas had written:
Rachel gave Charles something before she died.
A recording.
Charles has never found it.
But I know where she hid it.
Inside the child’s lullaby box.
May you like
Sophie knew exactly what that meant.
A wooden music box had sat beside her bed since infancy.
