Chapter 6 - The Wife Before Me
Daniel had told me he had never been married.
Henry admitted the truth inside my mother’s study.
Nine years earlier, Daniel had used the surname Carter and married a woman named Rebecca Hale. She was twenty eight, pregnant, and the sole heir to a hotel fortune in Colorado.
Rebecca disappeared three weeks before giving birth.
Daniel claimed she had left after suffering a mental breakdown.
Her family believed him because a psychiatrist produced records describing severe paranoia and violent behavior.
“Was the psychiatrist Vanessa?” I asked.
Henry nodded.
Vanessa Whitmore was not a doctor, but she had worked as an administrator inside a private mental health clinic. She had access to medical forms, patient files, and physicians willing to sign documents without asking questions.
She and Daniel had been partners for more than a decade.
“They targeted wealthy women,” Henry said. “Daniel married them. Vanessa created the evidence needed to make them appear unstable.”
“What happened to Rebecca?”
“Your mother believed she survived.”
I opened the envelope again.
My mother knew Daniel’s first wife was missing before I married him. She had tried to warn me, but Daniel had already convinced me that her suspicions came from dementia and grief.
Every time my mother called him dangerous, he held me afterward and said he feared losing me to her illness.
He had turned my love into a weapon.
Detective Brooks searched Daniel’s old identities and found two other women connected to him. Both had inherited property. Both had been hospitalized after sudden psychological episodes.
One died in a private clinic Vanessa managed.
The other had never been found.
That evening, a call came to the mansion’s landline.
I answered without speaking.
Daniel’s breathing filled the receiver.
“How is Eleanor?”
The sound of my daughter’s name in his mouth made me cold.
“You will never see her.”
“She is my legal child.”
“You tried to drug me.”
“I tried to keep you calm.”
“Where is Rebecca?”
Daniel became silent.
Then a woman spoke behind him.
“Claire?”
Her voice was faint and frightened.
“My name is Rebecca.”
I gripped the phone.
“Where are you?”
“I do not know. They move me whenever Daniel marries again.”
A loud impact interrupted her.
Daniel returned to the call.
“Bring the black remote to the old greenhouse before midnight.”
“Why?”
“Your mother hid the server’s encryption key inside it.”
I looked down at the remote in my hand.
It had never been merely a lock control.
Daniel continued.
“If you want Rebecca alive, come alone.”
The call ended.
Detective Brooks wanted to send an armed team. Henry wanted to destroy the remote.
I did neither.
At eleven forty, I left the mansion wearing my mother’s dark green scarf.
But I did not go to the greenhouse alone.
I carried a live transmitter inside Eleanor’s empty baby blanket.
May you like
And my supposedly dead mother was waiting in the back seat of my car.
Continue to the next part: Claire finally confronts the mother who abandoned her and learns the mansion was built as a trap long before Daniel entered their lives.
