Chapter 7 - THE HOUSE OF DEAD WOMEN
The Greenwich estate looked peaceful.
White columns.
Winter gardens.
Tall windows glowing against the night.
Inside, six bedrooms carried the names of women officially recorded as dead.
Isabel Whitmore was not the only survivor.
Claire Dalton sat inside a locked library.
Another woman, Diane Porter, had been declared dead after a yacht accident seven years earlier.
Dr. Hale maintained their medication.
Rebecca used their fingerprints and voices whenever the network needed new signatures.
The dead women had remained financially active.
Their legal identities approved transfers while their bodies remained hidden.
I entered through the front door carrying a duplicate founder key.
The real one remained in federal evidence.
Rebecca stood inside the study beside Isabel.
She was an ordinary looking woman in a dark suit.
That had always been her greatest protection.
No diamonds.
No public title.
No visible ambition.
She spent decades carrying folders for powerful people while learning how every estate could be dismantled.
“You resemble Eleanor more than I expected,” she said.
“You helped kill her.”
“Your mother helped build this house.”
“She tried to end it.”
“After it selected her daughter.”
Rebecca disliked the idea that late accountability could matter.
Perhaps because accepting it would make her own choices impossible to excuse.
Dr. Hale sat restrained near the fireplace.
Bianca had told the truth.
Rebecca intended to make him confess before disposing of him.
Isabel looked toward me.
“Charles?”
“Alive.”
“Did he give you the founder key?”
“No. I own it.”
Rebecca held out her hand.
“Place it on the desk.”
I did.
She scanned it.
The reader rejected the duplicate.
Her expression changed.
Federal agents entered through the service corridors.
Bianca had provided the original architectural plans.
Rebecca reached for Isabel.
Isabel pulled away.
Dr. Hale attempted to run.
Bianca stepped into the study wearing her recording device.
Her father stared at her.
“You brought them.”
“You left me to carry your crimes.”
“I protected you.”
“You taught me to make other women disappear before they could threaten us.”
He lowered his eyes.
Bianca had finally named the inheritance he gave her.
Rebecca activated an emergency system.
Steel shutters covered the windows.
Medication pumps inside the bedrooms began sounding.
She had connected each captive woman to a remote delivery network.
“If agents enter the medical wing, six patients receive fatal doses.”
Agent Hayes stopped the tactical team.
Rebecca smiled.
“Now we negotiate.”
Isabel spoke from beside her.
“You always needed us alive.”
“For signatures.”
“The system no longer needs signatures. Victoria froze the accounts.”
Rebecca looked toward the control panel.
The network still displayed active transfers.
Someone outside the estate had reopened them.
The emergency reserve began moving.
Not to Rebecca.
Not to Adrian.
Not to Bianca.
The receiving account belonged to Charles Whitmore.
Every person looked toward me.
Charles had resigned hours earlier.
His phone was inside federal custody.
Yet his biometric profile authorized the transfer.
Another copied identity.
The system had prepared a replacement owner before any arrest occurred.
Rebecca stared at the screen.
“I did not create that transfer.”
For the first time, she looked genuinely frightened.
“Who did?” I asked.
She whispered one name.
“Continuity.”
Not Continuity House.
A person using the title Continuity.
Rebecca had managed the network.
She had not owned it.
The remote medication countdown began.
Thirty seconds.
Dr. Hale knew the pumps.
Bianca knew the patient rooms.
Agent Hayes knew the electrical system.
I ordered the founder network disconnected from Sterling properties.
The estate lost external access.
Bianca entered the medical code her father had once taught her.
The pumps stopped at four seconds.
Agents arrested Rebecca and Dr. Hale.
Isabel was carried outside into Charles’s arms.
Neither spoke immediately.
He held her only after she reached toward him.
Inside the study, investigators recovered the master Continuity House ledger.
The first page listed Rebecca as director.
The final page named the beneficiary if the network failed.
VICTORIA STERLING.
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My identity had been prepared to inherit the crimes whether I lived or died.
Continue to the next part: Victoria must prove she is not the hidden owner of Continuity House before every recovered victim sees her name on the master ledger.
