Chapter 7 - The Lie Written on Lucy’s Birth Certificate
Elena read the screen three times.
“No.”
Gideon looked as if someone had struck him.
Caroline sat down slowly.
Evelyn closed her eyes.
Elena turned on her.
“You knew.”
“I suspected something had been altered.”
“That is not an answer.”
Lucy’s official birth certificate listed Daniel Hale as her father.
Elena remembered the delivery, Daniel crying when he held Lucy, the
ridiculous pink hat he bought before they knew whether they were having
a boy or girl.
There had never been another man.
Never.
“This is fake,” Elena said.
Caleb nodded. “Probably.”
“Probably?”
“The clinic record was created two months ago.”
Gideon’s expression hardened.
“Someone wants us to believe Lucy is mine.”
Caroline looked at the trust documents.
“Because a Cross heir changes control.”
The trap became clear.
If Lucy could be presented as Gideon’s biological child, someone could
challenge the company trust, freeze shares, and create chaos.
Warren might then seize control during litigation.
Elena whispered, “They’re using my daughter as paperwork.”
Gideon looked at her.
“No one is using her.”
“They already are.”
That night he doubled security.
Christmas Eve arrived beneath heavy snow.
For Lucy, the mansion was magical.
For everyone else, it was a locked box full of enemies.
She decorated gingerbread cookies with Caroline.
“Were you really dead?”
Caroline nearly dropped the icing bag.
Elena said, “Lucy.”
“What? Everybody says it.”
Caroline smiled sadly.
“People thought I was.”
“Did Santa know?”
Gideon, across the kitchen, muttered, “Excellent question.”
Caroline laughed.
It was the first time he had heard that laugh in five years.
Something in him softened.
Then Lucy placed a cookie on his plate.
It showed a crooked stick figure standing beside a wheelchair.
“That’s you.”
“Which one?”
“Both.”
He looked at her.
“Why both?”
“Because you’re in the middle.”
He swallowed.
Later his rehabilitation doctor arrived privately.
After examining Gideon, she looked furious.
“You have significantly more motor response than your records indicate.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I cannot promise you’ll walk independently. But whoever told
you rehabilitation was pointless was wrong.”
Gideon stared at his legs.
“Can I stand?”
“With assistance, possibly.”
Lucy, listening from the doorway despite being told not to, shouted, “I
knew it!”
Elena caught her.
“Eavesdropping.”
“I was encouraging.”
Gideon smiled.
They fitted braces and moved him between parallel bars in the estate
gym.
His arms shook.
Sweat ran down his face.
He pushed upward.
For one second his knees buckled.
Then again.
On the third attempt Gideon Cross stood.
Not freely.
Not safely.
But upright.
Lucy screamed with joy.
Elena cried.
Caroline covered her mouth.
Gideon looked at his reflection in the mirror.
He had forgotten how tall he was.
Then the lights went out.
A gunshot cracked downstairs.
Caleb shouted through the radio.
“Lock down!”
Gideon collapsed back into the chair.
Elena grabbed Lucy.
Smoke began curling beneath the gym door.
Not fire.
A smoke device.
Someone was inside.
Caleb’s team swept the house.
They found a guard unconscious and the server room open.
All digital copies of the trust investigation had been erased.
But the attacker made one mistake.
He entered through an old service tunnel beneath the west wing.
Mrs. Bell knew where it ended.
“The chapel,” she said.
The Cross family had built a small private chapel behind the estate
decades earlier.
Gideon, Caleb, and police reached it through the snow.
Inside they found Warren.
He was bleeding from the forehead, wrists tied to a pew.
“Help me!”
Gideon stopped.
“You expect me to believe this?”
Warren began crying.
“I didn’t do this.”
“Who did?”
“He knows everything.”
“Who?”
Warren looked toward the altar.
“He made me steal. He told me you’d never let me have what I deserved.
He arranged the crash. Voss handled the drugs.”
“Name.”
“I never knew his real name.”
Caleb searched the chapel.
Behind the altar he found a fresh photograph.
It had been taken that afternoon.
Lucy decorating cookies.
Someone had been inside the mansion watching her.
On the back:
May you like
THE GIRL IS NOT GIDEON’S HEIR.
SHE IS THE KEY TO FINDING THE REAL ONE.
