Free Web NovelChapter 50: Chapter 50 A Twin
_Rowena’s POV_
Kasper brought Corby to the Ashthorne estate’s east annex at four in the morning.
Not the main house, the annex was separate, originally built as a guest facility, currently used for storage and security operations. It had a room at the back with no windows and good soundproofing that Kasper had identified within his first week on the estate and had never explained why he’d identified it.
I had not asked. Tonight I was grateful.
I sat across from Corby at the plain table in that room and looked at him.
He was a man who had been certain of his position for nine years and had lost that certainty in approximately two hours. What remained was the smallness of someone who had understood, belatedly, the full weight of what they had been part of.
“Start from the beginning,” I said.
He started from the beginning.
The woman we called Alice was not actually Alice.
The real Alice had been the younger twin, the quieter, less ambitious one, the one who had married into a branch of the Ashthorne family’s extended circle thirty-five years ago and had spent her early marriage being precisely the devoted grandmother she appeared to be.
She had died twenty-six years ago.
Not publicly. She had died in circumstances that her twin, the woman who now occupied her life, her name, and her relationships, had arranged. Corby did not know the specific details of the original substitution. What he knew was the structure that had been built afterward.
The woman calling herself Alice was named Mara.
She had taken her twin’s place so completely, over so many years, that the substitution had become simply reality. She had moved into Alice’s life, Alice’s family connections, Alice’s access to the Ashthorne circle, and she had used all of it.
Mara had two things the real Alice had not had.
Ambition of a specific and terrible kind.
And Dickson, whom she had known for twenty years before the Continuance Program had a name.
The experiment had been her idea. Corby was clear on this, not suggested to Dickson, not pitched as a business arrangement. Mara had come to Dickson with the concept, with the scientific contacts, with the operational structure already roughed out. She had understood, before Dickson did, that the compound he was chasing required human blood, and she had understood that the Ashthorne Wine Company provided the perfect infrastructure, shipping, documentation, physical facility, and the protective legitimacy of an old family name.
She had also understood that the real Alice’s family connections gave her access to everything she needed to make it work.
I sat with that.
My grandmother. My mother’s family. The woman my grandfather had trusted for twenty-six years, who had sat at family dinners and attended family funerals and held my mother’s hand when her husband died.
Not Alice.
Mara.
Who had killed her own twin for this.
“The men,” Kyra said quietly.
I looked at Corby. “You said she was a prostitute,” I said. “Tell me.”
He told me.
Mara had maintained, separately from everything else, a group of men, three at various times, housed in a property registered under a shell company connected to Ridgeline Medical. Not employees or partners. Something more controlled than either.
“The family members,” I said. “The Ashthornes. The ones who found out.” fгeewёbnoѵel.cσm
Corby was quiet.
“Tell me,” I said.
He told me.
Seven people. Over twenty-six years, seven members of the Ashthorne family’s extended circle who had come too close to the truth, who had noticed inconsistencies, asked questions, begun to understand the shape of what was underneath the surface. Owen had been one. My father had been one.
Their remains had been disposed of at sea. Corby did not know the specific location. He knew it had been handled through a contact of Dickson’s who operated maritime logistics and had been compensated well enough to not require explanations.
Seven people.
My father. My brothers, who had been in the car because they were with him. Six people who had died because they had seen too clearly and had not been given the opportunity to do anything about it.
I sat at that table and felt something move through me that was too large for the room and too old for the past few hours. Grief and rage occupying the same space, pressing against each other, neither one winning.
“That’s everything you know?” I asked Corby.
“Everything,” he said.
I looked at him for a moment.
“You’re going to write all of it down,” I said. “Every name, every date, every transaction you were part of or witnessed. Kasper will stay with you.” I stood. “If what you write is complete and accurate, your cooperation will be noted when this goes to the King’s office. If it isn’t complete.....” I looked at him steadily “I will know, because I have Dickson’s documentation from the facility and I will compare it line by line.”
He nodded.
The eight people we had freed were in the main guest wing by now, the medical team had cleared them all, two required IV fluids and rest, the others were physically stable and had been given food and clean clothes and the specific care of people who understood what they had been through without requiring it to be explained.
I went to see them before dawn.
Sera was awake. Several of the others were too, sitting together in the way of people who had been through something shared and were not ready to be separate yet.
I sat with them for a while.
I told them what I was going to do, the commitment.
That Ridgeline Medical would be shut down. That Dickson would be found. That what had been done to them would be documented, prosecuted, and made impossible to quietly disappear.
They listened.
Then I told them each to give their details to Kasper, who would be outside the door, and that within the week each of them would receive ten thousand dollars for immediate resettlement, not compensation, nothing could compensate, but a foundation. Something to start from.
Sera looked at me when I said that.
“Why?” she asked. Not suspiciously. Just directly.
“Because my family’s name was on the building,” I said. “And because it’s the right thing and someone should do it.”
She nodded.
I stood up.
Dickson was gone but not invisible. A man running a nine-year operation did not disappear completely, he disappeared into the infrastructure he had built for exactly this contingency. Which meant he had a destination, and a destination meant contacts, and contacts meant a trail.
What I needed was the right bait.
Dickson had escaped tonight because he had prioritized the exit over everything else. That told me something specific, he had left the compound, the documentation, the facility, and Corby behind. He had left all of it, which meant he had a version of the program that existed somewhere else and he believed it was survivable.
He would try to restart.
To restart he needed the base compound and the base compound required a specific human blood type that could only be sourced through the network he had built. That network was currently exposed and unavailable.
He would need to rebuild the sourcing.
I was going to let him think he could.
I found Kasper in the corridor outside the annex room where Corby was writing his statement.
“I need a name,” I said. “Someone Dickson used for sourcing. Someone who might be willing to be someone I can control.”
Kasper looked at me. “You’re going to set a trap.”
“I’m going to set a trap,” I said.
“Using yourself as bait?”
“Using a controlled contact as the visible bait,” I said. “Me as the one holding the line.” I looked at him. “Can you find me that name?”
He was quiet for a moment. “Give me twenty-four hours.”
“You have twelve,”We have to move faster.”
Kasper nodded.
