Victoria froze.
“You?”
He looked exhausted.
His tuxedo jacket was gone. His white shirt was dirty.
“I didn’t take her.”
“Where is she?”
“I followed the man who did.”
“Who?”
A second figure emerged.
Older.
Nearly seventy.
Victoria recognized him immediately despite not seeing him for years.
Walter Briggs.
Her father’s former attorney.
The man who had handled the Hale estate for four decades.
He held Lucy by the shoulder.
Not violently.
But firmly enough that she could not run.
Lucy saw Victoria.
“Aunt Victoria!”
The word struck Victoria in the chest.
Aunt.
It was the first time Lucy had called her that.
Victoria stepped forward.
“I brought the letters.”
Briggs smiled faintly.
“You always were the practical one.”
“Let her go.”
“First the letters.”
Edward moved slightly.
Briggs glared.
“Stay where you are.”
Victoria looked at Edward.
“What is this?”
Edward swallowed.
“Briggs helped your father arrange Anna’s disappearance. He created the documents. The fake school records. Everything.”
Briggs sighed.
“Such dramatic language.”
“You kidnapped a twelve-year-old.”
“I relocated a difficult child at her father’s request.”
Victoria stared at him.
“You’re insane.”
“Your father believed reputation mattered.”
“My father was a monster.”
“He built everything you inherited.”
“No. He poisoned it.”
Lucy trembled.
Victoria forced herself to remain calm.
“Why now?”
Briggs looked toward the bag.
“Anna kept copies.”
“Copies of what?”
“The original Hale trust.”
Edward answered.
“The land documents.”
Victoria looked at him.
He continued.
“Your father didn’t own Hale House outright. Your mother’s family did. The property was supposed to pass equally to you and Anna.”
Victoria understood.
“If Anna was alive…”
“She still owned half,” Edward said.
Briggs’s expression hardened.
“And after her death, her share passes to her legal child.”
Everyone looked at Lucy.
The little girl’s face went pale.
Victoria’s anger became something colder.
“This was never about protecting the family.”
Briggs shrugged.
“Families like yours survive because difficult decisions are made quietly.”
“You stole her letters.”
“I prevented unnecessary disruption.”
“You kept sisters apart for twenty-eight years.”
“Your life turned out rather well.”
Victoria stared at him.
Then she laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because the sentence was so monstrous she could no longer contain the disbelief.
“My life?”
She stepped forward.
“I spent twenty-eight years believing my sister died scared and alone. Every birthday, every Christmas, every major moment of my life had an empty chair in it. I never married because every time someone got close, I became terrified they would disappear too.”
Briggs’s face did not change.
“You had success.”
“I would trade every dollar for one afternoon with Anna.”
Lucy began crying silently.
Victoria looked at her.
“And now you’re frightening her daughter for property?”
Briggs tightened his grip.
“Give me the letters.”
Victoria lifted the bag.
“You want them?”
“Yes.”
“Then let Lucy walk to me.”
“No.”
“Then you get nothing.”
“Victoria—”
“I said let her go.”
Briggs looked irritated.
He reached into his coat.
Edward stepped quickly between them.
Victoria’s heart jumped.
But Briggs pulled out no weapon.
Only an envelope.
“This is Anna’s final letter.”
Lucy gasped.
Briggs smiled.
“She mailed it three weeks before she died. Unfortunately, she sent it to an address I still monitored.”
Victoria stared.
“You had it the whole time.”
“Yes.”
“What does it say?”
“That is precisely what I would prefer no one ever read.”