Chapter 3
In the days that followed, Eleanor told me everything.
I had been taken when I was barely six months old. A woman posing as a nurse had walked out of the hospital with me and vanished.
The police had found nothing. No trace. No clue.
But Eleanor had never stopped. She’d kept the star bracelet. She’d kept the photo. And she’d prayed every day that the mark on my wrist would lead me back to her.
"It was the only thing they couldn’t take from you," she said, tracing the stars gently. "Your mark. My promise."
We were sitting in her study one evening when her lawyer arrived. He looked grave.
"Mrs. Holloway," he said. "I have news. About the woman who took Stella."
Eleanor stood quickly.
"You found her?"
"She’s dead," he said. "But before she died, she left a confession. And something else."
He handed over a sealed envelope.
Eleanor opened it. Her hands began to shake.
"She didn’t work alone," she whispered.
I leaned closer.
"Who was it?"
Eleanor looked at me, tears filling her eyes.
"She was hired," she said. "By someone in my own family. Someone who stood to inherit everything... if I had no child."
My blood ran cold.
May you like
"Who?"
"Your uncle," she said. "My own brother. He paid her to take you. He told me you were dead. And he waited twenty years to take my place."
