Chapter 5 - The Dead Mother's Journal
By 4:00 AM, the storm outside Blackstone Manor was raging, lightning illuminating the sprawling estate gardens in stark flashes of white.
Three dark police cruisers pulled quietly up the winding driveway, their siren lights off to avoid alerting the press. Four uniformed officers and two detectives stepped out, met at the front door by Marcus and Arthur Pendelton.
Inside the master suite on the second floor, Vivienne Blackstone was frantically stuffing jewelry, passports, and stacks of bearer bonds into a leather duffel bag. Her eyes were wild, her expensive makeup smeared from sweat and anxiety.
The bedroom door clicked open.
Julian stood in the doorway, flanked by the two police detectives.
"Julian!" Vivienne gasped, dropping a diamond tennis bracelet onto the carpet. "Julian, thank God! The security guards wouldn't let me leave! There's been a mistake—"
"Vivienne Sterling-Blackstone," the lead detective interrupted, stepping forward and pulling a pair of steel handcuffs from his belt. "You are under arrest for attempted murder, felony child abuse, kidnapping, and destruction of evidence."
Vivienne stumbled back against her vanity table, her face twisting in shock. "What?! Are you insane?! Do you know who my father is?! I am a Sterling! You can't touch me!"
"We have the video from the west gallery, Vivienne," Julian said coldly, watching her with dead, hollow eyes. "We have the audio. And we have the toxicology report from Oliver's blood."
The mention of the video hit Vivienne like a physical blow. Her posture collapsed, the haughty high-society facade vanishing instantly, replaced by a bitter, venomous sneer.
"You fool," Vivienne hissed as the officer grabbed her wrists, pulling them behind her back and snapping the steel cuffs shut. "You think you're a savior, Julian? You think you're a good father? You were so busy obsessing over your precious company that you didn't even notice your wife was dying two years ago!"
Julian flinched, but remained silent.
"You didn't notice when Eleanor was losing her mind, and you didn't notice when I put that little mistake into the wall!" Vivienne laughed bitterly as the officers forced her toward the door. "He looks just like her! Every time I looked at his face, I saw Eleanor! He was never going to inherit a single dime of the Blackstone fortune! It was all supposed to go to my future children!"
"You're never having children, Vivienne," Julian said quietly as she was dragged past him. "You're going to spend the next twenty years in a concrete cell."
"My father will destroy you for this, Julian!" Vivienne screamed, her voice echoing down the marble staircase as she was escorted out into the rain. "You hear me?! The Sterlings will ruin you!"
While the police cars drove away into the stormy night, Isabella remained in the quiet medical wing, gently rocking Oliver, who had finally fallen into a deep, natural sleep.
Julian walked into the room softly, shutting the door behind him. He looked exhausted, the lines on his face deepened by the night's horrors, but the dark cloud that had hung over his eyes seemed to have shifted.
He sat on the edge of the leather armchair beside Isabella.
"She's gone," Julian said quietly. "The police have her."
Isabella let out a long breath she didn't realize she was holding. "Good. He can finally sleep safely."
"Isabella," Julian said, his eyes scanning her tired face. "When you were in the secret passage... before you called out to me in the ballroom... did Oliver say anything else to you?"
Isabella hesitated. She looked down at Oliver's small face, then back at Julian.
"He said something strange," Isabella recalled softly. "When I first reached him in the dark, he thought I was his mother. He whispered, 'Mommy left the red book under the greenhouse floor.' I didn't know what he meant."
Julian froze. His hands began to shake again, but not from anger this time. From sheer, agonizing confusion.
"The red book..." Julian breathed, his voice barely audible. "Eleanor had a red leather journal. It disappeared the night she died in her fall from the glass conservatory."
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Julian stood up immediately, his posture rigid. "Stay here with Oliver, Isabella. Please."
Without waiting for a response, Julian pulled a flashlight from his coat and rushed out into the stormy night, heading straight toward the dark, abandoned glass greenhouse at the rear of the estate.
