I STOLE A ᴅᴇᴀᴅ WOMAN’S IDENтιтY TO MARRY A LONELY MOUNTAIN MAN—BUT ON OUR WEDDING NIGHT, HE WHISPERED, “I KNOW WHO YOU REALLY ARE… AND I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU.”
PART 2 — SECRETS BENEATH THE PINE
The sound of those three slow knocks froze the blood in my veins.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
Iron on stone. Directly beneath where I stood.
“Charlotte…” the muffled voice rose through the cracks of the pine timber, raspy, strained, and filled with an ache that made my knees buckle. “He’s lying to you… he helped Edward take everything…”
I stumbled back, my hands trembling against the edge of the worktable. The midnight-blue silk slithered off the wood, pooling like spilled ink on the floor.
“You told me never to touch that iron ring,” I whispered, staring at Gabriel. My chest heaved for air. “You said it led to an abandoned mining shaft filled with bad air.”
“Charlotte, step away from the floorboards,” Gabriel commanded, his voice dropping to a harsh, desperate rasp. He levered a fresh cartridge into his Winchester, his eyes fixed on the front window where lanterns flared in the howling blizzard. “Listen to the cadence. That isn’t Elizabeth. It’s a trap.”
“How can you say that?” Tears blurred my vision. “I heard her! She knows my name!”
“Because Victoria has had eighteen years to mimic every breath your mother ever drew!” Gabriel hissed, moving toward the corner of the room. He reached down with his boot, kicking a heavy iron bolt into place across the front door just as the first shoulder rammed against it from outside.
BOOM!
The doorframe groaned, sending dust showering down from the roof beams.
“OPEN UP, HAWTHORNE!” Sheriff Mercer roared over the wind. “You’re outnumbered and outgunned! Hand over the Bennett girl and we leave you the cabin!“
“You’ll leave me a grave and burn the timber behind you, Mercer!” Gabriel yelled back, his rifle resting on the window sill.
Through the frost, Judge Blackwell stepped forward into the lantern light. He looked immaculate in a black wool coat lined with sable fur, a gold-tipped cane resting in his leather-gloved hands. Flanking him was the woman who claimed to be my mother.
Her face was illuminated by the swinging carriage lantern.
My breath caught.
It was the woman from the pH๏τograph. The high cheekbones. The dark curls escaping a velvet bonnet. The slight crook in her smile. It was like looking at a portrait brought to life by dark magic.
“Charlotte, darling!” the woman pleaded, extending gloved hands toward the door. “Look at me! Don’t let this monster keep us apart any longer! He killed your father… he forged the death certificate so he could hide me away!”
“DON’T LOOK AT HER!”
The voice from beneath the floor screamed again, sharper this time, accompanied by the frantic rattling of heavy iron chains.
“Charlotte! The locket! Check the back of your mother’s locket! The inscription—she doesn’t know what it says!”
I froze.
My fingers sH๏τ to my collar, tearing open the top ʙuттon of my dress. I yanked out the small gold oval my mother had fastened around my neck eighteen years ago.
Gabriel turned his head, his gray eyes burning with fierce urgency. “Read it, Charlotte. Before Blackwell blows that door off its hinges.”
I turned the pendant over.
Scratched into the worn gold on the reverse side were four tiny, faded letters:
V. H.
Not E. B. for Elizabeth Bennett.
V. H.
Victoria Hawthorne.
My world tilted violently. “Victoria… this was hers?”
“Your mother didn’t give you that necklace,” Gabriel whispered, never lowering his weapon. “Your mother died on the operating table in St. Jude’s asylum eighteen years ago, bleeding from a forced surgical signature. Victoria gave you that locket the night she tried to smuggle you out of Blackwell’s estate—before she lost her nerve and traded you to your father to save her own skin.”
“Then who is under the floor?” I cried, panic clawing at my throat. “Who is in the cellar?”
Before Gabriel could answer, a thunderous crack split the night air.
A rifle bullet smashed through the cabin window, punching through the wall an inch above Gabriel’s shoulder.
“TAKE THE DOORS OFF!” Blackwell shouted.
Two deputies ran forward carrying a heavy pine timber like a battering ram.
“Down!” Gabriel lunged across the cabin, his mᴀssive frame shielding me as the ram smashed into the center of the door. The oak gave way with a splintering shriek. Iron hinges tore from the log frame, and cold snow blasted into the room.
Deputies poured through the breach, guns drawn.
Gabriel fired from the hip. The blast took the first deputy in the knee, sending him crashing into the table. Gabriel swung the heavy rifle stock, shattering the second man’s jaw, but Sheriff Mercer lunged from the shadows, slamming an iron revolver barrel into Gabriel’s temple.
Gabriel grunted, blood spraying across the floorboards as he fell to one knee.
“Gabriel!” I screamed, lunging forward.
A leather glove caught my hair, yanking me viciously backward.
“Careful, my dear,” Judge Blackwell purred, his fingers тιԍнтening around my scalp. “You’ve caused an immense amount of trouble for a ᴅᴇᴀᴅ girl.”
He shoved me toward the velvet-clad woman standing in the doorway.
The woman looked down at me, her face pale, her lips painted crimson against the winter chill. Up close, beneath the soft light of the fireplace, the illusion began to crack. Her eyes weren’t the warm hazel of the pH๏τograph. They were cold, flat, and gray—like stones beneath a frozen pond.
“You’re not my mother,” I whispered, horror rising in my chest.
Victoria smiled—a sharp, venomous twitch of her lips. “No, little niece. But on every legal document in the territory of Colorado… my signature is the only one that matches the name Elizabeth Bennett.”
Behind her, Sheriff Mercer pressed the muzzle of his Colt against Gabriel’s bleeding skull.
“Search the floor,” Blackwell commanded Mercer. “Find the old man’s ledger before the snow covers the trail.”
“Wait,” Victoria said, her eyes narrowing as she looked at the iron ring beside the hearth. “What about the girl in the cellar?”
The girl?
My head snapped toward the trapdoor.
“Leave her,” Blackwell dismissed with a wave of his gold cane. “Once we have Charlotte’s signature on the mine transfer, we burn the cabin. The fire will clean up whatever loose ends Hawthorne buried down there eighteen years ago.”
Gabriel coughed, spitting crimson onto Mercer’s boots. A bloody, defiant grin spread across his scarred face.
“You’re too late, Edward,” Gabriel rasped.
Blackwell frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“Charlotte didn’t come here as Charlotte Bennett,” Gabriel said, his voice carrying clearly over the howling blizzard. “She came as Margaret Sinclair. And she signed the parish marriage register in Silver Creek three days ago.”
Silence slammed down on the cabin.
Blackwell’s face drained of color. He whipped toward Mercer. “Is this true?”
“Under territorial law,” Gabriel chuckled through the blood in his teeth, “a wife’s property is legally bound to her husband’s estate. You can’t force her to sign away the Nevada trust… because the trust automatically transferred to me the moment she took my name.”
Blackwell raised his cane and struck Gabriel across the face. Gabriel took the blow without a sound, his eyes burning into mine.
“Then I’ll hang you for her father’s murder and execute the widow’s deed myself,” Blackwell snarled.
He reached into his breast pocket, pulling out a heavy iron fountain pen and the parchment deed to the silver mine. He grabbed my wrist, twisting it until bone grinded against bone.
“Sign, Charlotte. Sign, or I blow Hawthorne’s head across these logs right now.”
I looked at Gabriel.
His face was battered, blood dripping into his beard, but he slowly shook his head. Don’t.
Then, from the shattered doorway, the sound of galloping horses cut through the gale.
Not one rider. A dozen.
Lantern light flickered through the pine trees outside, casting long, menacing shadows across the snow. A horn sounded—the distinctive brᴀss blast of the United States Territorial Marshals.
Mercer panicked, stepping away from Gabriel. “Judge! The federal riders—they weren’t supposed to be here until morning!”
Victoria gasped, backing toward the dark porch. “Edward, we have to run!”
“Shut up!” Blackwell roared, raising his revolver toward Gabriel’s chest. “If I don’t get the mine, nobody does!”
Before Blackwell could pull the trigger, the iron ring beside the hearth violently shifted.
The heavy stone trapdoor blasted open from below.
A figure lunged out of the darkness—not a frail, dying woman, but a young woman clad in buckskin and wolf pelt, her eyes wild, brandishing a rusted iron skinning knife.
She drove the blade straight into Blackwell’s shoulder with terrifying speed.
Blackwell shrieked in agony, dropping the gun and tumbling backward into the embers of the hearth.
The young woman stood panting in the smoke, her dark hair matted with grime, blood streaking her cheek.
When she turned toward the firelight, my heart completely stopped.
She wasn’t forty. She was twenty-four.
She had my dark hair.
She had my jawline.
She had my mother’s hazel eyes.
She looked at me, her chest heaving, then glanced down at the gold locket resting against my collarbone.
“You stole my mother’s name,” the girl rasped, raising the bloodstained knife toward my throat. “And you let them lock me in the dark for eighteen years while you lived in Denver as the pampered heiress.”
Gabriel hauled himself up against the log wall, his voice cracking with pure terror as he lunged between us.
“Charlotte, run!” Gabriel screamed. “She isn’t your sister—she’s the real Charlotte Bennett!”
TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 3…
