Chapter 18 - THE SISTER NOBODY SAW
Sophie Mercer was the invisible part of the plan.
While Victoria performed for cameras and Charles controlled documents, Sophie watched.
Staff schedules.
Hospital rooms.
Security changes.
She had worked under a false name at Ravenwood for six months.
And she was the last person recorded entering Elise’s room before the fire.
Police found her apartment empty.
On the kitchen table sat a single photograph of Victoria and Sophie as children.
Across Victoria’s face, someone had drawn a black X.
This was not loyalty.
It was hatred.
Sophie called Adrian that afternoon.
“I’m not helping my father.”
“Then why are you stalking my family?”
“Because if Charles believes I betrayed him, I’m dead.”
“Where is he?”
“Alive.”
Adrian closed his eyes.
Sophie had staged the river tracks. Charles never reached the ice. She drove him south in an ambulance stolen from a private contractor.
“Why?”
“Because I wanted the ledger pages.”
The missing pages from Elise’s crash.
Sophie said they proved Victoria had ordered Dane to follow Elise, but Charles had changed the instruction from surveillance to collision without telling his daughter.
“Victoria wanted Elise scared,” Sophie said. “My father wanted her silent.”
“Where are the pages?”
“With me.”
“Bring them to Ortiz.”
“I will trade them.”
“For what?”
“Protection.”
They arranged a meeting at a federal building.
Sophie arrived through the underground garage carrying a red folder.
Before she reached the elevator, a suppressed gunshot struck the wall beside her.
Agents pulled her behind a concrete pillar.
Charles stepped from between two parked vans.
He fired again.
Adrian saw him from the security room upstairs.
Charles had come for his daughter.
May you like
Not to save her.
To kill her.
