Chapter 216
Chapter 216
Ondine's registration had been filed under Zane's brother and sister-in-law's names from the very beginning.
Caspian pulled out the photocopy of the registrar's witness statement and placed it beside the roster. The record was crystal clear.
Zane had come alone with the infant to file the paperwork, claiming the baby was his brother and sister-in-law's child. Every verification step involving next of kin had been deliberately circumvented.
Caspian drew the final piece of evidence from the box.
It was a written statement from a nurse who'd worked the same ward — a detailed account of Zane's frequent, unauthorized entries into the nursery during his shifts, how he'd carried two infants out alone, and the gifts he'd sent afterward to buy silence.
Attached was a disc. On the case, two words were written in marker: 'Recording.'
He handed the disc to his assistant.
The assistant turned and went inside. Moments later, the electronic display in the courtyard — normally used for family photos — flickered to life.
On screen sat an elderly nurse, her hair completely white, settled in a wicker chair. The wrinkles on her face ran deep as dried riverbeds, but her speech remained sharp and clear.
In a slow, regional cadence, she recounted every detail of that night twenty years ago.
Zane had walked into the delivery ward in his maintenance uniform and lifted two newborn girls from their bassinets one by one. After making the switch, he'd stood at the nursery door and smoked a cigarette. Only after finishing it did he turn and leave.
She said she'd asked him at the time why he was carrying the babies. He told her the head nurse had asked him to help change their clothes.
She hadn't thought twice about it then. It wasn't until years later that something felt wrong — but by that time Zane had long left the hospital, and no one had ever followed up.
The recording ended. No one in the courtyard spoke.
Zane's composure had completely collapsed by the halfway point of the video.
He slid from between the security guards' arms, his knees cracking against the cold bluestone with a dull, heavy thud.
He knelt there like a hollowed-out statue, his throat producing a string of hoarse sounds — half muttering to himself, half begging for mercy.
But he didn't say "the evidence is fake" again. Didn't say "I've been framed." He just hung his head, bracing himself against the ground with hands mottled by age spots, his shoulders shaking violently.
The web of lies he'd woven over twenty years. The secret he'd believed would stay buried for a lifetime. Dismantled now — document by document, statement by statement, frame by frame — until not even the skeleton remained.
He knelt on the bluestone of the Windsor Manor. In the courtyard where he'd served as butler for two decades. Beneath his knees were the same stones he'd swept every morning with a broom.
They were ice-cold.
---
Valencia stepped forward. Her heels struck the bluestone in sharp, rapid clicks — each step steady and urgent.
She reached the stone table and pulled the stack of documents toward her, turning them page by page.
Her hands were shaking. Not a subtle tremor — her entire hands shook uncontrollably from wrist to fingertip. The pages crumpled in her grip, deep creases folding into the paper beneath her palms.
She reached the newborn registration form. Saw the altered information. Saw her own daughter's birth record crossed out in black ink, another name scrawled beside it.
Her lips began to tremble violently.
She spun around to face Zane on his knees, and her voice detonated from the depths of her chest.
It wasn't the voice of the poised, elegant Mrs. Windsor. It was the raw, shredded scream of a mother deceived for twenty years — separated from her own flesh and blood for twenty years — tearing the sound from the deepest chamber of her being.
"We treated you well! Decades of generous pay, complete trust, every household matter placed in your hands — we treated you like family!
How dare you — how dare you do something so unconscionable!" Her eyes were crimson, tears rolling from their corners, but she didn't wipe them. She only stared at Zane kneeling on the ground.
"You stole my daughter from me. You kept us apart for twenty years! Sera suffered for twenty years in the Wipere family. And every one of those twenty years, Ondine was here in the Windsor Manor wearing designer gowns, sleeping in a warm bedroom, being called 'Ms. Windsor' by everyone who saw her!
You stood there every single day with your serving tray and watched. Was there even one night you couldn't sleep? Was there even one second you felt sorry for what you did to me?"
Clayton rushed down from the steps and grabbed Valencia's arm.
He had never seen his mother like this. She stood in the Windsor Manor courtyard screaming at the old butler on his knees, her voice shaking as though she were emptying every sleepless night of the past twenty years from her chest all at once.
Clayton wrapped one arm around Valencia's shoulders and gently patted her back with the other, his voice low. "Mom. Don't make yourself sick."
His own eyes had gone red, but he didn't let the tears fall. He just clenched his jaw and guided Valencia to the stone bench.
After she sat down, her hands were still trembling.
She clutched the stack of documents to her chest, head bowed. Tears fell one by one onto the yellowed pages, darkening the paper.
Wesley moved to her side, one hand pressed against her back. He said nothing. He simply stood there in silence, the warmth of his palm offering something steady and heavy.
---
Caspian turned. His gaze swept past the stone table and the spread of documents, landing on Ondine.
She was still standing in place, her back pressed against the portico column, fingers clamped around Kieran's cuff. But Kieran was no longer looking at her.
His arm still hung at his side, but his fingers were open. He wasn't holding her hand. He wasn't pulling her behind him anymore.
He just stood there in silence, staring at Zane on his knees, at the yellowed evidence on the stone table. The expression on his face shifted from shock to blankness, then from blankness to the lost, directionless bewilderment of someone who's been deceived and doesn't know where to put it.
Caspian spoke.
His tone was ice. Not a single ripple. "All the terrible things you've done over these years — planned and orchestrated with your own hands. How many do you even remember?"
Ondine's pupils contracted sharply.
Her mouth opened. A shapeless syllable pushed from her throat, but Caspian didn't give her the chance.
"The moment Sera returned to the Windsor family, you began tormenting her in secret. You colluded with Xiomara again and again, setting traps at every turn. The arson at the abandoned station in Mill Creek Village — an attempt to burn Sera alive and silence her — that was you and Zane, conspiring in private."
"At the welcome banquet, you prepared drugs in advance, determined to destroy Sera's reputation in front of everyone. If the plan hadn't fallen apart, she would never have been able to hold her head up again.
At Apex Praxis Clinic, you bribed a supplier to swap in contaminated herbs, incited online mobs, and forced Dr. Jordan's decades-old practice to shut down."