Chapter 10 - Shadows on the Projector
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We froze, our weapons and flashlights aimed at the wall.
The projector began playing a silent 16mm home video clip. The image was grainy, flickering with age, but clearly visible.
Two eight-year-old boys in matching red and blue sweaters were playing in a sunlit garden, laughing as they chased a golden retriever around a marble fountain. Standing behind them was a beautiful woman with sharp auburn hair and gentle green eyes, holding a little girl in her arms.
I stepped closer to the wall, my breath catching in my chest.
"That's my mother..." I whispered.
The woman in the film was Evelyn Bennett—my mother, who had supposedly died in a car accident when I was six years old. And the tiny girl she was holding, wearing a bright yellow raincoat, was me.
"What was your mother doing at the Carter clinic in 2002?" Lena asked, keeping her gun trained on the surrounding dark doorways.
"She was a chief administrator here," a deep, raspy voice called out from the darkness above us.
We spun around, our lights sweeping the iron staircase that spiraled up to the second-floor balcony.
A man stepped slowly into the pale light of the projector beam.
He looked so much like Ethan that for a second my brain refused to process the difference. But as he came closer, the contrast became stark. He wore a heavy leather jacket instead of a bespoke suit. A long, faint surgical scar ran along his jawline, and his dark grey eyes held an unyielding, bitter rage that Ethan had never possessed.
Lucas Carter had returned from the dead.
"Welcome home, Ava," Lucas said, his voice echoing off the concrete walls. "It's been a long twenty-four years, hasn't it?"
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"Why did you frame your brother?" I demanded, my hands shaking. "Ethan did nothing to you!"
Lucas let out a cold, sharp laugh as he descended the stairs, his boots thudding against the metal steps. "Ethan got the empire, Ava. He got the family name, the penthouse, the billions, and the clean reputation. Do you know what I got? I got locked in a basement by Dr. Andrew Vaughn’s father while this building burned to the ground!"
