Chapter 8 - The Shadow in the MirrorBy 4:00 AM, my body temperature had stabilized, and the uterine contractions had completely stopped. Dr. Thorne cleared me for transfer to my father's private estate in Denver—a heavily fortified compound protected by twenty-four-hour armed security.
I lay in the back of a luxury armored SUV, wrapped in a fleece blanket, looking out the tinted window as the snow-covered pines of the mountains gave way to the glowing lights of the city below.
My father sat across from me, reviewing a digital dossier on his tablet.
"Evelyn Vance fled her apartment in downtown Denver two hours ago," Dad said without looking up. "She took a private charter flight to Miami. My team is currently monitoring her movements."
"Dad," I said quietly, looking at his stern profile in the dim interior light. "You still haven't told me the whole truth."
He paused, his thumb hovering over the screen.
"Brenna knew about the Zurich loophole thirty years ago," I said, leaning forward despite the dull pain in my ribs. "How? Diego’s mother was an interior decorator from Texas. How did she know about a private Swiss foundation charter created before I was even born?"
My father slowly turned off his tablet, the blue light fading from his face, leaving his expression shrouded in deep shadow.
"Brenna was not always Brenna Castillo, Clara," my father said softly.
My breath caught in my throat. "What?"
"Thirty years ago, her name was Brenna Vance," my father revealed, his voice dropping into a register of profound bitterness. "She was Evelyn Vance's older sister. And thirty years ago, in Zurich... she was my first wife."
I stared at my father, total disbelief paralyzing my mind.
"Your... your first wife?" I stammered. "You told me my mother was the only woman you ever loved!"
"Your mother was the only woman I ever loved," my father said fiercely. "My marriage to Brenna was a political arrangement forced upon me by my own father to secure shipping rights in Europe. It lasted less than two years, and it ended in a vicious, bloody legal war when I discovered she was leaking company secrets to foreign rivals."
May you like
He looked out the window at the passing streetlights.
"I paid her twenty million dollars to sign a non-disclosure agreement, change her name, and disappear forever," he continued. "I thought she was gone. But five years ago, she sent her son, Diego—born from her second marriage—into your life. She raised him for one purpose, Clara: to infiltrate our family, marry you, and take back the fortune she believed I had stolen from her."
