Chapter 13 - Blackthorn should have been impossible to enter.Blackthorn should have been impossible to enter.
Federal agents guarded the estate.
Every access point was monitored.
Yet when Mercer contacted the team, nobody answered.
A tactical unit arrived twenty minutes later.
They found four agents unconscious.
Alive.
Drugged.
Helena had used the house’s original ventilation system.
A system not shown on modern plans.
Of course.
Blackthorn had been built around secrets.
Maren stared at the estate from a surveillance van the next evening.
Sunset turned the ocean orange.
Celestine sat beside her.
“You don’t have to go,” Maren said.
“Yes, I do.”
“She wants us together.”
“I know.”
“That’s exactly why you shouldn’t.”
Celestine looked at her.
“She spent my entire life making me think something had been stolen from me.”
“Something was.”
“You.”
Maren’s expression softened.
Celestine continued.
“I thought another woman had my mother. My life. My child.”
“You were manipulated.”
“Yes.”
“And then I almost married your husband.”
“Ex-husband.”
Despite everything, Celestine laughed.
Maren did too.
It lasted two seconds.
But it mattered.
Mercer fitted them with transmitters.
Adrian insisted on joining the perimeter team.
Gabriel, still injured, was furious he couldn’t come.
Rebecca and Daniel were under protective detention.
Lenora had requested to speak with Maren before the operation.
Maren agreed.
Lenora sat behind glass.
“You’re going into Blackthorn.”
“Yes.”
“Helena will take you below the old clinic.”
“What’s below it?”
Lenora looked ashamed.
“The original laboratory.”
“Why didn’t police find it?”
“Everett sealed the entrance twenty years ago.”
“Helena knows?”
“She designed it.”
Maren leaned closer.
“How do we enter?”
“Through the wine cellar. Rack seventeen. Pull the third bottle from the left.”
“Very dramatic.”
“Everett liked theater.”
Maren stood.
Lenora said,
“Maren.”
She stopped.
“I believed I was protecting Adrian.”
Maren turned.
Lenora’s eyes filled.
“That is not an excuse.”
“No.”
“I destroyed you because Everett convinced me losing you would destroy my son.”
Maren said nothing.
“I let them drug you.”
Silence.
“I helped build the custody case.”
Maren had known.
Hearing it still hurt.
Lenora whispered,
“I am sorry.”
Maren looked at the woman who had once been almost a mother.
“Help us get Iris back.”
“I will.”
“That’s the only apology I want.”
At 7:03 p.m., Maren and Celestine entered Blackthorn.
The house was silent.
Wedding flowers still hung dried and brown from the stair rail.
A champagne glass remained beneath a table.
The place looked frozen at the moment everything broke.
They followed Helena’s instructions.
Nursery.
Hidden corridor.
Medical clinic.
Then wine cellar.
Rack seventeen.
Third bottle.
A mechanical lock released.
Stone wall opened.
Stairs descended.
Celestine whispered,
“I’ve never been down here.”
Maren believed her.
At the bottom stood a large circular room.
Three chairs.
Three screens.
Exactly like the old videos.
Amelia sat in one chair.
Iris in another.
Helena stood between them.
She looked at Maren and Celestine.
“My daughters.”
Celestine flinched.
Maren said,
“Let Iris go.”
“Soon.”
“Now.”
Helena smiled.
“You sound like me.”
“That isn’t a compliment.”
Helena’s face tightened.
“Everett took you.”
“Which one?”
She looked between them.
“That is why we are here.”
Celestine stepped forward.
“We don’t care.”
“I do.”
“That’s your sickness.”
Helena slapped her.
Maren lunged.
Armed guards emerged.
Two men.
Guardian.
Maren stopped.
Helena touched Celestine’s cheek.
“I’m sorry.”
Celestine stared with hatred.
“No, you’re not.”
Helena turned toward Maren.
“One of you is Elena. The other is Elise.”
Maren shrugged.
“Fine.”
Helena’s composure cracked slightly.
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand perfectly.”
“No.”
“You lost your daughters because Everett turned them into subjects. Then instead of being their mother when you found them, you kept treating them like subjects.”
Helena’s eyes filled with rage.
“I spent twenty-eight years trying to undo what he did.”
“Using his methods.”
“Because his methods worked.”
There.
Truth.
Maren saw it.
Helena needed the experiment to have worked.
Otherwise everything she had sacrificed became meaningless.
Amelia laughed weakly from the chair.
“She’s worse than him.”
Helena turned.
“You would say that.”
“You stole me from my father.”
“Kellan offered you.”
Amelia’s face crumpled.
“What?”
Helena smiled coldly.
“Thomas volunteered you as the replacement after Elise died.”
Everyone froze.
Maren whispered,
“Elise died?”
Helena nodded.
“At the well.”
Celestine went white.
“No.”
“One twin pushed the other. Elise struck her head.”
Maren felt nauseated.
“Which of us pushed her?”
Helena looked at them.
“That is the question.”
Maren shook her head.
“If Elise died, then one of us is Elena and the other is Amelia.”
Helena smiled.
“Yes.”
Celestine stared at Amelia.
“But DNA says Amelia is Kellan’s daughter.”
Helena turned toward the restrained woman.
“This Amelia is not the original Amelia.”
Silence.
Maren almost laughed from the absurdity.
Helena explained.
Thomas Kellan’s daughter Amelia was used as a replacement child after Elise died.
Years later, that replacement disappeared too.
The woman in the chair had been another Guardian subject given Amelia’s identity.
Identity stacked upon identity.
Mercer’s voice whispered through Maren’s hidden earpiece.
Keep her talking.
Maren did.
“Where is the real Amelia?”
Helena’s expression softened.
“You’ve known her for years.”
Maren stared.
Then understood.
“Rebecca.”
Helena smiled.
Celestine gasped.
Rebecca was Thomas Kellan’s daughter.
Not Helena’s sister.
That explained the DNA mismatch.
Rebecca had been inserted into the family later as another control.
Maren’s entire childhood had been built from Guardian subjects protecting one another without knowing their true connections.
Helena continued.
“Everett believed biology was secondary. Memory creates family.”
Maren looked at Iris.
“He was wrong.”
“Was he?”
Helena gestured toward Adrian’s voice coming faintly through Maren’s earpiece.
“You still care about a man you were manipulated into marrying.”
Maren froze.
Helena knew about the transmitter.
One guard ripped it from Maren’s dress.
Helena crushed it beneath her heel.
Outside, Mercer heard static.
“Move!” she ordered.
Tactical teams entered.
But Helena smiled.
“You shouldn’t have brought them.”
She pressed a button.
Steel doors slammed throughout the underground complex.
Maren turned toward Iris.
Helena grabbed a syringe.
“Final trial.”
“No.”
“One memory.”
Helena injected something into Maren’s arm before she could move.
Celestine screamed.
The room tilted.
Maren fought.
Helena’s voice became distant.
“Remember the well.”
Darkness.
Then sunlight.
Maren was six.
Two girls stood beside a stone well.
One crying.
One angry.
A red wooden horse between them.
“You’re not Elena!” one girl screamed.
“Yes, I am!”
“No! Mommy loves me!”
A shove.
A scream.
A body falling.
Maren watched from somewhere else.
Not inside either child.
Behind a tree.
She wasn’t one of the two girls.
Maren’s adult consciousness recoiled.
If she had been watching—
Then she was not Elena.
Not Elise.
Not Amelia.
She was a fourth child.
The memory sharpened.
A woman grabbed her hand.
Rebecca.
Young.
Terrified.
“Don’t let them see you, Mara.”
Mara.
Not Maren.
Maren woke screaming.
Helena leaned over her.
“What did you see?”
Maren stared.
Then smiled through tears.
“You were wrong.”
Helena froze.
“About what?”
“I’m neither of them.”
Celestine stared.
Helena stepped back.
“No.”
“My name wasn’t Elena.”
“No.”
“It wasn’t Elise.”
“Stop.”
“It was Mara.”
Helena’s face collapsed.
Maren whispered,
“You didn’t lose two daughters.”
The steel door behind Helena exploded inward.
Mercer’s team breached the room.
May you like
Maren looked directly at Helena.
“You lost three.”
