Chapter 10 - Victoria Tells the TruthVictoria agreed to talk on one condition.
After Danielle’s call, he finally did.
Michael had been twenty-two.
Brilliant.
Restless.
Constantly fighting with their father.
Officially he died during a sailing accident near Bermuda.
Body never recovered.
Nathan had been nineteen.
“My mother told me he fell overboard.”
Cole asked, “Witnesses?”
“My father.”
“Anyone else?”
“Crew.”
“Names?”
“I don’t remember.”
Naomi found them.
Three crew members.
One dead.
One living overseas.
One untraceable.
Then she found something else.
Michael had been investigating Bennett Foundation accounts before his disappearance.
The same accounts Victoria claimed Nathan’s father had been abusing.
“What if Michael discovered everything first?” I asked.
Nathan looked sick.
“Then my parents had two children who knew too much.”
The phrase hung heavily.
Grace sat beside Rachel.
Her expression changed.
“I saw Uncle Michael.”
Nathan spun around.
“What?”
“At one of the houses.”
“When?”
“Last year.”
“You know what he looks like?”
“Grandma had pictures.”
“Where?”
“A room downstairs.”
“What happened?”
“He was sick.”
“How?”
Grace struggled.
“He didn’t talk much.”
Nathan knelt.
“Did he know you?”
She nodded.
“He called me Gracie.”
Nathan closed his eyes.
No stranger would have known the childhood nickname Michael used before he vanished.
“He’s alive.”
Rachel touched Nathan’s shoulder.
Grace added, “Danielle hated when Grandma visited him.”
“Why?”
“Because Grandma cried.”
That complicated everything.
Victoria was a killer.
A kidnapper.
A conspirator.
But perhaps not everything she had done came from simple cruelty.
Cole warned us not to romanticize her.
“Whatever her motives, she held people illegally for years.”
He was right.
Still, the truth had layers.
Daniel Mercer became the next priority.
His vehicle was found abandoned near a motel outside Charleston.
Inside the trunk, police found clothing, cash, and a flash drive.
The drive contained nothing.
But a motel security camera showed Daniel leaving with a laptop bag.
He boarded a rideshare.
Destination: Charleston International Airport.
He never entered the terminal.
Instead he exited near the rental-car return and disappeared into another vehicle.
Naomi enhanced footage.
A woman drove.
Danielle.
They were working together.
Or pretending to.
“How do we find them?” Nathan demanded.
Grace answered.
“They always use church names.”
Everyone looked at her.
“What?”
“Safe houses.”
She explained Danielle avoided addresses when speaking around children.
Locations were assigned names from saints.
Saint Peter.
Saint Anne.
Saint Michael.
Nathan froze.
Michael.
“Where was Uncle Michael kept?”
Grace thought.
“Saint Jude.”
Cole searched properties connected to shell companies near Charleston.
Nothing.
Naomi expanded across South Carolina.
No obvious match.
Then I remembered something.
“Saint Jude is patron saint of lost causes.”
Cole looked at me.
“My mom was Catholic.”
Nathan stared at the map.
“Lost causes.”
He whispered the phrase.
“My father owned a rehabilitation center.”
“Where?”
“Outside Beaufort. Closed twenty years ago.”
Name?
Jude Harbor Recovery Center.
Police rushed the property.
The main buildings were abandoned.
But electricity flowed to a maintenance cottage behind the old chapel.
Inside they found medical equipment.
Restraints.
Food.
And recent DNA traces.
Michael had been there.
But he was gone.
Again.
Danielle was moving pieces ahead of us.
Then a laptop recovered from the cottage changed everything.
It belonged to Daniel Mercer.
He had left in a hurry.
The computer contained encrypted files.
Naomi’s team cracked one folder.
Photographs.
Payments.
Private adoption records.
Police officials.
Judges.
Doctors.
Agency workers.
Dozens of children.
Some cases stretched back twenty years.
This wasn’t Danielle’s operation alone.
It had begun long before she worked for the Bennetts.
Nathan stared at names.
“My father.”
His father appeared throughout the documents.
Victoria had told part of the truth.
Arthur Bennett had been involved in illegal child placements through the foundation.
Michael discovered it.
Victoria apparently helped hide him rather than let Arthur kill him.
Then years later, when Grace witnessed Victoria killing Arthur, Danielle exploited the situation.
But why keep Michael prisoner after Arthur’s death?
Grace gave the answer.
“Uncle Michael knows all the names.”
He was a living witness.
Nathan sat beside her.
“How do you know?”
“He told me.”
“What else did he say?”
Grace’s eyes filled.
“He said if I ever got home, tell you he was sorry.”
“For what?”
“He said he left you alone with them.”
Nathan’s face broke.
Rachel wrapped an arm around him.
My phone buzzed.
A text.
Unknown sender.
One photograph.
Michael Bennett sat tied to a chair.
Older.
Gray at the temples.
Thin.
But unmistakably related to Nathan.
He held today’s newspaper.
Below the image:
PHONE FOR BROTHER. MIDNIGHT. NO POLICE.
Coordinates followed.
Cole immediately began planning.
Nathan shook his head.
“No police means they’re watching.”
“Of course they’re watching.”
“I’m going.”
Rachel grabbed him.
“No.”
“He’s my brother.”
“And Grace needs her father.”
“So did I.”
Rachel flinched.
Nathan lowered his voice.
“I spent fifteen years believing Michael died. I spent three believing Grace died. I am finished burying living people.”
Cole ultimately allowed Nathan to participate under surveillance.
The exchange location was an abandoned marina.
Midnight arrived.
Nathan stood alone beneath a broken dock light holding a decoy phone.
A van approached.
Daniel Mercer stepped out.
No Danielle.
No Michael.
Nathan’s voice carried through his hidden microphone.
“Where’s my brother?”
Daniel smiled.
“Still impatient.”
“You helped steal my daughter.”
“I helped keep your company alive.”
“You intercepted every clue.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because your father built something worth protecting.”
Nathan’s fists clenched.
“Children are not assets.”
“To men like your father, everything was an asset.”
“Where is Michael?”
Daniel held out his hand.
“Phone.”
Nathan lifted it.
“Brother first.”
A gunshot cracked.
Daniel spun and fell.
Police surged from hiding.
A second shot struck the dock.
Sniper.
Cole dragged Nathan behind cover.
Daniel screamed.
“Danielle!”
Another bullet hit near his head.
“She’s killing him,” I whispered from the command vehicle.
Police located the shooter’s position.
Empty.
Danielle had fired remotely using a mounted weapon triggered from somewhere else.
Daniel survived.
Barely.
As paramedics treated him, he grabbed Cole’s vest.
“She has Michael.”
“We know.”
“No.”
Daniel coughed blood.
“You don’t understand.”
“Where?”
Daniel looked toward Nathan.
“She’s taking him to Victoria.”
“Why?”
“Because Victoria is the only person who knows where the originals are.”
“What originals?”
Daniel smiled faintly.
“The list.”
Then his eyes closed.
He was rushed to surgery.
Nathan stared toward the black water.
The operation was bigger than anyone had realized.
And the person who might still know everything—
May you like
was lying under police guard with a bullet in her shoulder.
Victoria Bennett.
