Chapter 24 - The Swap at Blackwood Sanitarium
Pain exploded through Daniel’s chest, sharp and white-hot. He hit the floor, gasping for breath, the taste of metallic copper flooding his mouth.
Standing over him was Evelyn Vale.
Up close, the resemblance to Eleanor was uncanny, almost supernatural. She wore Eleanor's emerald velvet dinner gown, her hair swept up in the exact same elegant chignon. But her eyes were entirely different. Eleanor's eyes had been cold, calculated, and sharp; Evelyn’s eyes burned with an unhinged, feral madness. And running from just below her left ear to the center of her collarbone was the horrific, jagged surgical scar—the permanent mark of an emergency tracheotomy.
"You really don't see it, do you, Daniel?" Evelyn purred, tilting her head with a chilling, doll-like curiosity. She twirled the iron poker in her gloved fingers. "You men... you are so easily blinded by a pretty face and a refined pedigree."
"Where... is Clara?" Daniel wheezed, clutching his bruised side, his eyes locked on the digital timer on the crib: *00:02:18.*
Hannah stood at the nursery door, holding a heavy marble bookend, her eyes blazing. "Drop the poker, Evelyn! Police are already on their way!"
Evelyn threw back her head and laughed—a sound so hollow and discordant it made the hair on Daniel’s arms stand up. "Police? Detective Vance won't be coming tonight, sweet Hannah. Detective Vance’s cruiser took an unexpected detour into Blackwood Lake about twenty minutes ago. His brakes seemed to have suffered an unfortunate mechanical failure."
Hannah blanched, stepping back in horror.
"Let me tell you a bedtime story, Daniel," Evelyn said softly, stepping closer to Daniel, pointing the bloody tip of the poker at his throat. "Five years ago, Eleanor found out our father’s secret will. The entire Vale estate was left to me. Not her. Eleanor couldn't tolerate being second best. So she had her private doctors drug me, forge psychiatric reports, and commit me to Blackwood Sanitarium under her name."
Daniel stared at her, his mind spinning as pieces of a horrifying puzzle snapped together. "You... you were Eleanor?"
"I was the original Eleanor," she whispered, her scarred throat clicking with every word. "And my darling sister assumed my life, took my inheritance, and married the dashing billionaire Daniel Bedford! But Blackwood had a fire three weeks ago. And when the ashes cleared, I walked out. And yesterday, at your little charity gala... I made sure Eleanor was finally arrested for pushing your sweet little Clara into that fountain."
"You pushed Clara," Daniel whispered, horror gripping him. "It wasn't Eleanor at the fountain... it was you!"
"Of course it was me!" Evelyn laughed ecstatically. "Eleanor was upstairs in her bridal suite taking a sedative! I wore her dress, walked out into the gardens, and threw your precious brat into the fountain right in front of two hundred of your elite friends! I needed the world to destroy Eleanor’s perfect reputation! I needed her locked away in an iron cage, just like she did to me!"
The timer on the crib chirped: *00:01:00.*
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"And now," Evelyn whispered, leaning down until her lips brushed Daniel’s ear, "Eleanor will rot in prison for the rest of her life, convicted of murdering Daniel Bedford and his beloved daughter."
***
