Chapter 6 - The Ghost of Saint Jude's
We met Julian Vance in a quiet, secluded corner of a dimly lit steakhouse near Greenwich Harbor. He looked remarkably like his late brother Mark—the same piercing gray eyes and square jawline—but there was a hardened, hyper-vigilant energy about him.
He didn't shake my hand; he looked at me with a mixture of intense scrutiny and profound sadness.
"You look so much like Georgia used to look before my brother married her," Julian said, his voice a low rumble. "Before your mother got her hooks into my family."
"Julian," I said, leaning across the white tablecloth. "Evelyn told us you have the financial records from Prague."
Julian pulled a encrypted USB drive from his jacket pocket and placed it on the table between us.
"My brother Mark wasn't a saint, Clara," Julian said, staring at the small black drive. "He was a gambler. He owed two hundred grand to some very bad people in Atlantic City six years ago. When Georgia got pregnant with Josh, your mother offered Mark a way out."
"What kind of way out?" David asked.
"Eleanor paid off Mark's gambling debts," Julian revealed, his jaw tightening. "In exchange, Mark signed an agreement allowing Eleanor to take full control of Georgia’s reproductive medical decisions at Saint Jude's. When Josh was born prematurely, the baby was never in real danger. He had a mild respiratory infection."
I gasped, covering my mouth with both hands. "What?"
"Josh didn't die of natural causes, Clara," Julian said, his eyes darkening with a terrifying fury. "Your mother bribed a night nurse at Saint Jude's to falsify the infant's death certificate. They put Josh into a private medical transport and flew him to a specialized neonatal facility in Switzerland."
The restaurant around us seemed to freeze. The clinking of wine glasses, the quiet chatter of wealthy diners, the jazz music playing overhead—all of it faded into absolute static.
"Josh... Josh is alive?" I whispered, my voice breaking into a million tiny fragments.
"Josh is five years old," Julian said, nodding slowly. "He is currently living under a false identity in a private boarding school outside Zurich, funded entirely by your mother’s Cayman Islands trust. Your mother didn't just steal Sam, Clara. She created an entire underground network of hidden children to control Mark, to control Georgia, and to secure the Vance inheritance."
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"Why?" David slammed his fist onto the table, making the water glasses rattle. "Why the hell would a mother do that to her own daughters?!"
"Because Eleanor isn't just your mother, Clara," Julian said softly, looking at me with deep pity. "Eleanor is a clinical sociopath who has been running a multi-million-dollar illegal adoption and surrogacy ring through her Ridgefield clinic for over fifteen years. And Georgia... Georgia didn't go crazy on her own. Your mother has been systematically drugging her with heavy hallucinogens for four years to keep her compliant."
