Chapter 15 - The Mother’s Vow
The cold reality slammed into the small viewing room like an artillery shell. Emily fell to her knees on the linoleum floor, her hands clutching her head as a wave of hysterical agony tore through her body.
"Seven years..." she sobbed, her voice breaking into agonizing shards. "I loved a lie! My real baby was thrown into a clinical furnace while I raised a stranger's child!"
Charles did not look at the papers. He walked over to his daughter, dropped to one knee despite the agonizing arthritis in his joints, and wrapped his arms around her shaking shoulders.
"Listen to me, Emily," Charles said, his voice ringing with absolute, unbreakable authority. "Listen to your father."
Emily looked up through swollen, tear-blinded eyes. "How can you look at her the same way, Dad? She isn't your granddaughter! She isn't a Whitmore!"
"She is a Whitmore because I said she is," Charles answered, his eyes burning with an ancient, terrifying resolve. "Blood is nothing more than chemistry, Emily. Biology is an accident of nature. But family? Family is what you bleed for. Family is what you pull out of a pool when everyone else is running away. You taught that girl how to walk. You taught her how to read. You wiped her vomit when she had the flu. When that black car came today, you threw yourself in front of a gun for her!"
Emily choked on a sob, her chest heaving.
"Are you going to tell me that wasn't a mother's soul standing on that pavement?" Charles demanded. "Tell me! Would you let those men take her because a piece of paper says her DNA belongs to a Russian grave?"
Emily stopped shaking. The hysteria slowly began to drain from her face, replaced by a cold, primeval rage that Charles had never seen in her before. It was the same ruthless, predatory fire that had made Charles Whitmore the most feared financier on the West Coast.
She wiped her tears with the back of her sleeve. She stood up.
"Where is the man who brokered the switch?" Emily asked, her voice deadly, flat, and hollow.
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"The doctor who signed the death certificate was named Dr. Julian Vance," Charles replied, reading from the document. "He retired to a compound in Malibu three years ago."
"Then let’s go see the good doctor," Emily said, her voice dropping into an icy whisper. "And Vance... bring the heavy cases."
