CHAPTER FOUR-The Wrong Beginning
1260 Words
Evelyn’s POV
I stared at the photograph until the faces began to blur. One woman had given birth to a child.
The other woman had raised one.
For twenty six years, I had believed those two women were the same person.
Now I wasn’t sure of anything.
I looked up at Damien.
“Who are they?”
He didn’t answer straight away.
Instead, he walked to the shelf beside the leather chair and picked up another file.
Unlike Project Lazarus, this one was old.
The corners were worn, and the cover had faded with time.
He placed it on the table between us.
“The woman in the first photograph was admitted to Ashbourne General Hospital on the night of April eighteenth, twenty six years ago.”
My eyes returned to the picture.
“She gave birth to a healthy baby girl.”
His voice remained calm.
“According to every official record, that child disappeared less than twelve hours later.”
I swallowed.
“And the second photograph?”
He looked at me. “The woman you knew as your mother.”
My chest tightened.
“No.”
The word escaped before I could stop it.
“My parents were ordinary people.”
“I know that’s what you believe.”
“It isn’t what I believe.”
I shook my head.
“It’s what I know.”
Damien watched me without interrupting.
“My father fixed watches.”
I could still picture him sitting at the wooden table near the window with tiny gears spread across a cloth.
“He wasn’t part of anything like this.”
“I never said he was.”
“My mother worked at the local library.”
I heard my own voice growing sharper.
“They weren’t criminals.”
“They weren’t.”
The room fell silent.
That answer caught me off guard.
I frowned.
“You agree?”
“I’ve spent years investigating your past.”
His eyes never left mine.
“Daniel Sloane was exactly the man everyone believed he was.”
Something inside me eased.
Only a little.
“He loved you.”
I looked away.
“I know.”
“He never treated you differently.”
“No.”
“He never knew.”
I looked back at Damien.
“What do you mean?”
His expression stayed the same.
“I don’t believe your father knew the truth.”
The words settled inside my head.
Slowly.
Carefully.
If Daniel had never known…
Then someone else had hidden it from him too.
I looked down at the photographs again.
“My mother.”
I stopped.
Even saying the word felt strange now.
“The woman who raised me.”
Damien nodded. “What about her?”
He opened the old file.
“She gave birth on the same night.”
I frowned.
“So?”
“So both babies were born within forty minutes of each other.”
I felt my heartbeat slow.
“No.”
Damien slid another page toward me.
It was a hospital chart.
Two delivery rooms.
Two mothers.
Two girls.
The times were different by less than an hour.
I looked from one page to the next.
“This proves nothing.”
“It proves they were both there.”
“It doesn’t prove I was switched.”
“No.”
He nodded once.
“It doesn’t.”
I let out a quiet breath.
For a second, I thought I had found a hole in his story.
Then he turned another page.
A nurse’s statement.
Half the page had been covered with black ink.
Someone had tried to hide almost everything.
Only a few lines remained.
Infant removed from maternity ward…
Unauthorised transfer…
Records altered…
My stomach tightened.
“Who did this?”
“We don’t know.”
“You’ve had six years.”
“I found evidence.”
He looked at the missing words.
“Not names.”
I leaned closer.
The signature at the bottom had survived.
Clara Bennett.
I looked up.
“Who’s Clara Bennett?”
“The only nurse who refused to change her statement.”
“What happened to her?”
“She disappeared three days later.”
I stared at him.
“You think she was murdered.”
“I think someone wanted everyone to believe that.”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
His honesty was becoming irritating.
Every answer ended with another question.
I closed the file.
“This isn’t enough.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be.”
I frowned.
“What does that mean?”
“It means these files were hidden.”
He pointed at Project Lazarus.
“They weren’t created to expose the truth.”
“They were created to preserve it.”
I folded my arms.
“That’s a very expensive archive for old hospital records.”
“It wasn’t always about hospital records.”
He reached for the black file again.
“Project Lazarus became something much larger.”
I looked at the cover.
“The name doesn’t tell me anything.”
“It wasn’t meant to.”
He opened another section.
Inside were photographs.
Children.
Dozens of them.
Some were smiling.
Some were crying.
Each photograph had a number beneath it.
Not a name.
Just a number.
A cold feeling spread through my chest.
“What is this?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve had these for years.”
“I found the file two months ago.”
I looked at him.
“You only found it two months ago?”
“I spent almost six years trying to locate it.”
I glanced around the archive.
“And tonight you decided to leave it sitting here.”
“I knew someone would come for it.”
“You.”
He nodded.
“The anonymous client.”
I felt my jaw tighten.
“You think whoever hired me wanted me to find this.”
“I know they did.”
“How?”
“Because no professional thief would ever accept a job without checking the target.”
I didn’t argue.
He was right.
“I knew you’d study Blackwood Technologies.”
He smiled faintly.
“I also knew you’d discover the maintenance entrance.”
“You left it open.”
“I did.”
I stared at him.
“So I’ve been manipulated by two different people tonight.”
“It would seem that way.”
I laughed once.
There wasn’t any humour in it.
“I hate being predictable.”
“You aren’t.”
He looked at me.
“You simply care too much about the truth.”
I looked away.
Daniel used to tell me the same thing.
Curiosity gets expensive.
He always smiled when he said it.
Then he would hand me another broken watch and ask if I could figure out why it had stopped.
He never gave me the answer.
He wanted me to find it.
I blinked away the memory.
“What now?”
Damien closed the file.
“Now we find Clara Bennett.”
I frowned.
“You think she’s alive.”
“I wouldn’t have spent six years searching for a dead woman.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
His eyes met mine.
“Then someone else knows what happened in that hospital.”
Before I could answer, every light in the archive went out.
Darkness swallowed the room.
Neither of us moved.
Then a single gunshot echoed somewhere above us.
Another followed.
Much closer this time.
Damien spoke quietly.
“We’re not alone.”
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