Chapter 2 - The Secret Beneath the FloorboardsThe words hung in the air like poison smoke.
That blanket belonged to him.
Ethan let out a soft, sleepy whimper against my chest, oblivious to the emotional earthquake shaking the room. I pulled the yellow blanket tighter around his small shoulders, my heart pounding against my ribs like a trapped bird. What did Evelyn mean? This blanket was a cheap, store-bought cotton throw I had picked up at a discount store in downtown Los Angeles before Ethan was born. It couldn't possibly have belonged to anyone in this dynastic, multi-million-dollar Beverly Hills family.
Sebastian pulled himself upright against the headboard, his broad shoulders tensing as he glared at his mother. The frailty of his fevered night was entirely gone, replaced by the fierce, terrifying intensity of a billionaire CEO cornered by a lifetime of lies.
“Explain yourself, Mother,” Sebastian demanded, his voice dropping into a register that commanded absolute obedience. He pointed a long, steady finger at the scattered papers on the floor. “What is that report? For twenty years, you told me the crash was my fault. You told me my father died because I asked him to change the radio station. Every single day of my life, you made sure I lived in this chair as punishment!”
Evelyn’s composure crumbled. The icy, untouchable matriarch of the Reed construction empire vanished, leaving behind a terrified, cornered woman. She sank heavily onto the velvet bench at the foot of the bed, her eyes wide with horror as she looked between Sebastian, the yellow blanket, and me.
“You don't understand, Sebastian,” she choked out, tears finally spilling over her carefully powdered cheeks. “You were just a boy... I had to protect you from the truth.”
“Protect me?” Sebastian laughed, a harsh, humorless sound that lacked any warmth. “You buried me alive! You spent twenty years making sure I hated myself more than the paralysis ever could! What truth could possibly be worse than believing I killed my own father?”
I shifted Ethan carefully in my arms, preparing to stand up and slip out of the room. This was a private family nightmare, a blood-soaked secret that a hired housekeeper had no business witnessing. But before I could move my feet, my eyes drifted down to the scattered police report on the floor.
One of the photographs, flipped face-up near the nightstand, caught my eye.
It was a black-and-white crime scene photo of the wreckage of the Reed family sedan. But what caught my attention wasn't the crushed metal or the shattered glass. It was a detail in the backseat—a small, crumpled bundle of fabric half-buried beneath a medical kit.
A bright yellow baby blanket with a distinctive hand-stitched blue border.
My breath caught in my throat. I looked down at the blanket clutched in my eighteen-month-old son’s tiny hands. It had the exact same hand-stitched blue border.
“Evelyn,” I whispered, my voice trembling despite my best efforts to stay calm. “Where did you get that blanket?”
Evelyn slowly raised her head, her red-rimmed eyes locking onto me with a mixture of dread and ancient sorrow. “It wasn't yours, Mary. It was in the car the night my husband died. It belonged to the baby we lost... the twin brother Sebastian never knew he had.”
The room spun.
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Sebastian froze, his dark eyes widening in utter disbelief. “A... a twin? I had a brother?”
“He wasn't lost in the crash,” Evelyn sobbed, covering her face with her shaking hands. “He was stolen from the hospital nursery three days before the accident. And that blanket... was the only thing left behind in his crib.”
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