Chapter 116 SERAPHINA LANCASTER
Chapter 116 SERAPHINA LANCASTER
Nancy's POV
“So hit me. Tell me what you got,” I said to Arabella once we were all finally seated.
“Wait, what is this even about?” Linda asked, her gaze anxiously traveling from mine to Arabella’s, while Kelvin remained completely silent beside us.
Instead of explaining, I simply passed her the pictures Kelvin had found in the mailbox. Linda’s gaze held mine for a tense second before she slowly looked down at the photos.
“What in the world…” she muttered, her fingers trembling slightly as she flipped through the stack to the very last one. When she finally looked up at me, pure fear filled her eyes. She immediately slammed the rest of the pictures down onto the table, holding back only one.
“I told you not to get involved in this! I know you want to find Ravyn Vale so badly, but you just wouldn't listen to me, Nancy!” Linda scolded, dropping the final picture face-up on the table.
I reached out and picked it up, realizing I had completely missed it earlier. A cold dread washed over me. It was a picture of me and Jaxon from that secret party in his Brentmere hotel—the one I had sneaked into by disguising myself as one of the hired girls.
Flipping it over, I read the handwriting on the back. The message sent a violent surge of fury flaming up through my chest.
> Boom! I found you! Hope you loved my birthday gift to your daughter? More is still coming, I promise.
>
“Aaaaah!” I screamed, the sound tearing from my throat as I furiously ripped the pictures into tiny, unrecognizable pieces. “I am going to kill them! I am fucking going to kill them!”
My voice broke, splintering under the weight of my rage. I buried my face in my palms, the suffocating pressure of the situation finally taking its toll on my sanity. I felt like I was physically breaking down.
“Nancy, please, I need you to calm down,” Arabella began softly. “I know you never really involved me in your kidnapping case, but I’ve known all along that Jaxon was the child kidnapped alongside you in Brookleigh. And ever since then, I made up my mind to look into it. I knew there was no way a child wouldn't eventually recognize his own mother.”
It felt like she was dragging out the explanation, and with every second that ticked by, I felt a desperate, agonizing waste of time.
I finally pulled myself together, aggressively wiping away the hot tears that managed to slip down my cheeks.
“Get to the point, Arabella. Tell me about the Lancasters,” I demanded, my gaze fixing sharply onto hers. “I want to know everything.”
“Okay,” Arabella said, taking a breath. “Immediately after I graduated, I began submitting my application to the main branch of the Lennox Lux Hotel in Brookleigh. But after getting so many rejections, I realized something. If I wanted to get the information I needed about the Lennox family incident that happened twenty-one years ago, I needed to look for connections outside of just them. So, I started digging into the Lancaster family.”
She paused, adjusting her posture.
“On the surface, the internet didn't have much. It only talked about the late Mr. and Mrs. Lancaster—may their souls rest in peace—their achievements, and their daughter, Anastasia Lancaster. She was listed as the sole heiress of the Lancaster family. There was never any mention of another child. At first, it didn't seem suspicious. I just thought to myself that all I needed to do was get close to Jaxon Lennox and figure out if he truly suffered from a mental disorder. But when my employment application was rejected again, I secretly joined a Jaxon Lennox anonymous fan forum.”
Arabella's eyes locked onto mine, the gravity of her words weighing heavily in the room.
“That was where I came across an anonymous user who kept insisting they believed Mrs. Lennox was actually a completely different person. The comment caught my attention instantly, but because they posted anonymously, I couldn't reach out to them directly. So, I just started leaving replies under every single comment they made, until eventually, they sent me a direct message.”
Arabella took out her phone, her thumb scrolling through the screen.
“And the very first thing she told me was that Anastasia Lancaster wasn't an only child. She had a twin sister who was rumored to have died at sea. Her name was Seraphina Lancaster.”
Silence fell over the room. Everyone went completely still, lost in the heavy implications of what we were hearing.
Suddenly, Kelvin let out a sharp, cynical laugh. It was a sound laced with disbelief, or perhaps the desperate denial of someone trying to convince themselves it wasn't true.
“So, let me get this straight,” Kelvin said, his voice tight with an anger he could barely suppress as he ran a stressed hand through his hair. “You met a random stranger online who told you all of this, and you just blindly believed it without a shred of proof?”
“Yes, Kelvin. I believe her because she does have proof,” Arabella shot back defensively. “As a matter of fact, she graduated from the same kindergarten as the twins. She was close to the Lancaster family because they were neighbors at the time. She even sent me this.”
Arabella turned her phone around, sliding a digital photograph across the table for us to see.
I leaned in, staring at the five young figures in the picture. They couldn't have been more than four or five years old. The twins stood in the center, sporting the brightest smiles imaginable, their hands locked tightly together as they stood alongside three other students.
“The kids in the photo were all from the same neighborhood, so their families took the picture back then to make sure everyone had a copy,” Arabella explained, her eyes darting toward Kelvin before returning to me. “I don't know which of the other three kids reached out to me, since she insists on remaining anonymous. She said her family moved away when she was about eight years old, and she was sure the twins were the same age. They didn't move very far, but she did change schools.”
She sighed, her expression darkening.
“It was two years later—meaning they were ten at the time—that Seraphina Lancaster was reported missing. The source wasn't entirely sure of the exact details, but she knew the rumors: the two girls had wandered onto a boat without their parents' knowledge, and that boat was caught in a massive storm. It was widely believed that the storm claimed Seraphina's life. Mr. and Mrs. Lancaster launched a massive search party to find their missing daughter, but her body was never recovered. After a year or two, they quietly called off the search and took down every public notice regarding her disappearance.”
“So, let me get this straight,” Linda interjected, a skeptical, stunned smirk breaking across her face. “Are you implying that Mrs. Lennox might actually not be the real Anastasia Lennox after all?”
“Yes,” Arabella said, her eyes pinning Kelvin to his seat. I could tell she already knew exactly who Kelvin really was. “It seems Seraphina Lancaster didn't die in that storm after all. And honestly, we have someone who can practically testify to that.”
“Now we know her true identity,” I muttered aloud, the pieces violently clicking together in my mind. “After all, she already admitted to killing her. What we need to understand now is why she is doing this to her own sister. If she has been alive this entire time, why didn't she just come forward? Why hide? Why go this far?”
“Well, for starters, maybe she blamed her sister for whatever happened on that boat that caused her to go missing,” Arabella offered with a heavy sigh. “From what I was told, Seraphina was always the calmest and nicest of the two. If Anastasia was causing trouble, Seraphina was the one cleaning it up. Something truly horrific must have driven her to this extreme.”
I didn't care about her motives. A terrifying realization gripped my chest.
“I need to find a way to reach Jaxon,” I said urgently, my gaze shifting to Kelvin, who had fallen completely silent after his sudden outburst. “She wants him dead. And the moment she discovers that Kelvin's true identity has been exposed, every single one of us is going to be in extreme danger.”
I stared at Kelvin, and for the first time, I looked at him differently. In the heavy silence of the room, I didn't just see an ally anymore. I saw a son who looked like he would do absolutely anything to protect his mother—even if it meant harming everyone else around him.