“We aren’t asking you to violate the law,” Rebecca explained. “We’re trying to establish whether records were altered.”
The doctor considered the question.
Then he opened a locked cabinet and removed an old medical file.
“The original record was amended at the request of Margaret Hale. I refused to change the medical facts, but I was instructed to issue a replacement document with limited information.”
“Why?” Emily asked.
“Because Eleanor feared that revealing the father’s identity would expose her daughter to a custody dispute and a public scandal.”
Reed showed them a sealed page containing the father’s name.
Alexander read it.
His expression changed.
The biological father of Victoria Hale was Thomas Whitmore.
Richard’s younger brother.
The man who had died eleven years earlier.
Emily stared at the page.
“Then Victoria is Thomas’s daughter?”
Reed nodded.
Alexander felt the implications settle over him.
Victoria was Eleanor Carter’s daughter and Thomas Whitmore’s child. She had been raised by Margaret Hale, who had hidden her parentage from the world.
The trust was not merely an inheritance.
It was a record of a family relationship that someone had spent years concealing.
And Thomas’s death might have been connected to the secret.
