Chapter 12 - The Girl by the River-12
The Olentangy River ran along the eastern edge of our town, its muddy brown waters churning dark and fast beneath the rain.
On a high bluff overlooking the river stood a small, secluded whitewashed cottage surrounded by wild rose bushes and weeping willows. It was the home of Dr. Clara Vance—Julian’s aunt, Senator Thomas Vance’s younger sister, and the former Chief Medical Examiner of the county who had retired thirty years ago after a bitter, public fallout with her brother.
I parked Arthur’s sedan at the edge of the dirt lane, running up the wooden steps of the cottage through the pouring rain, hammering my fists against the heavy pine door.
"Clara! Clara, open the door!" I shouted over the sound of the storm.
A light flickered on inside the house. A few seconds later, the door swung open, revealing an elderly woman with sharp grey eyes, wearing a thick wool cardigan over a nightgown, holding an antique double-barreled shotgun pointed directly at my chest.
"Who's there?" Clara demanded, her voice sharp as a whip.
"Clara... it's Emma," I panted, wiping the rain and coal dust from my eyes. "Emma Miller. Julian’s... Julian’s friend."
Clara stared at me for three long seconds. Slowly, her eyes drifted down to the silver locket hanging around my neck—the locket Julian had given me.
She lowered the shotgun instantly, stepping back to let me inside.
"You're late, child," Clara said softly, her voice carrying no surprise whatsoever. "I've been waiting ten years for you to walk through that door."
I stood dripping wet on her hardwood floor, stunned. "You... you knew?"
"Of course I knew," Clara said, walking over to a small tea station, pouring two mugs of steaming dark tea. "Julian came to me the night before his 'crash.' I was the one who gave him the false passport. I was the one who helped him fake his death."
My jaw dropped open. "Julian is... Julian is alive?!"
Clara turned around, setting a warm mug into my shaking hands. She looked into my eyes with a deep, sorrowful affection.
"He was alive when he left America, Emma," Clara said softly. "He lived in a small coastal village in Scotland under the name Ian Ross. But three years ago... his heart failed. He died peacefully in his sleep."
A sharp, stabbing pain pierced my chest. Tears filled my eyes, hot and bitter. For ten years, a tiny, quiet part of my heart had held onto the foolish hope that maybe, somewhere out there, Julian was waiting for us. Now, that hope was officially gone.
"He spoke of you every single week in his letters, Emma," Clara whispered, pulling a small wooden box from a drawer near the fireplace. "And he told me that if you ever came back to Ohio, it meant my brother Thomas was trying to destroy the child."
"Thomas has Leo," I choked out, the panic rising in my throat again. "He took him to Vance Manor tonight!"
May you like
Clara smiled—a cold, terrifying smile that showed where the Vance bloodline got its true strength.
"Then it's time we open the safe," Clara said, opening the wooden box to reveal a high-grade encryption laptop and a satellite communications link. "Julian didn't just leave documents, Emma. He left the master passkey that controls my brother's offshore bank accounts in the Cayman Islands—every single bribe, every payment to federal agents, every illegal transaction from the chemical plant."
