> "Sophia…"
The name trembled from Eleanor Windsor's lips like it had been buried under years of silence and sorrow.
James's breath caught.
I clutched the doorway, frozen.
She spoke.
After years of silence, of doctors saying she was lost forever—she spoke.
And the name she remembered was my mother's.
James turned toward me slowly, his face pale, stunned.
"She remembers her."
The nurse gasped, rushing toward the door. "We'll need to notify the doctor immediately—this is her first word in over ten years!"
But Eleanor's hand gripped James's tightly. Her frail fingers trembled. Her lips tried to move again.
"Sophia… they took her…"
She was fading fast.
"Who took her?" I asked, moving closer, crouching beside James. "Who took Sophia?"
Eleanor's eyes slowly lifted. They met mine.
And just before she slipped back into silence, she whispered:
> "Room twenty-three…"
The nurse looked confused. "That room hasn't been used in years."
James stood up, his voice hard and urgent. "Take us there. Now."
"No one goes into that wing," the nurse said, lowering her voice. "It was shut down after a fire twelve years ago. Most of it's abandoned. Unstable."
"Unstable or not," I said, my voice sharper than it had ever been, "she gave us that room number for a reason. If she spoke after ten years of silence, we're not ignoring it."
She hesitated… then nodded.
"Follow me."
We were led through a locked corridor, down a hallway lined with cracked walls and old patient files stacked like forgotten memories. The further we went, the colder the air grew.
Finally, we reached it.
Room 23.
The number plate was scratched. The door creaked on its hinges.
James turned the knob slowly.
Inside, the lights flickered to life, casting a yellow glow over a room that looked like it hadn't been touched in a decade. A hospital bed stood in the center. The sheets were still in place. A dresser. A chair. A shattered window half-covered with tape.
Dust clung to everything like silence.
But then I saw it.
A small leather-bound journal lying on the edge of the table.
It had initials pressed into the cover.
S.M.
Sophia Moore.
I snatched it up, fingers shaking, heart hammering. I flipped through the fragile pages, the ink faded but still legible. Names. Dates. Notes. Paranoia.
> "They don't want me to leave."
"They've threatened her again—Eleanor is scared."
"If anything happens to me, tell Amelia the truth. She deserves to know."
My eyes blurred with tears.
James gently took the journal from my hands, reading along with me.
He froze at the next page.
> "The baby isn't safe in the Blake house. They smile in the light and whisper death in the dark."
I sank onto the edge of the bed, mouth dry.
"They knew," I whispered. "The Blakes. My adoptive parents. They knew what happened to her."
James crouched in front of me, his hands gently taking mine.
"This was never about just Eleanor or Sophia," he said. "This was a system. A cover-up. Something bigger than both our families."
I looked up at him, the fear in my chest melting into something else.
Determination.
"Then we expose them."
But before James could respond, the nurse's radio crackled loudly.
"Security to Wing C. Intruders have breached the perimeter."
She turned sharply. "That's this wing."
James stood, eyes alert. "Someone's trying to stop us."
I stood too, clutching the journal to my chest.
"Then we run."
We raced out the back exit just as heavy footsteps thundered down the hallway.
James pulled me into his car, tires screeching as we tore away from the clinic.
We didn't speak for miles. Just silence and adrenaline.
Finally, I turned to him, still holding the journal.
"She wrote it all down."
James glanced at me, voice steady. "And now they'll come for it."
I tightened my grip. "Let them try."
Because I wasn't just an orphan anymore.
I wasn't the girl who fell in love with her brother.
I wasn't even just a woman caught between two powerful men.
I was the daughter of Sophia Moore. And someone was about to pay for every lie they told.