Chapter 7 - The Brother I Buried
Marcus pulled me behind a steel support column.
Bullets struck the depot walls, sending sparks into the darkness.
Daniel dropped beside an overturned crate.
Owen moved faster than a man his age should have. He grabbed Daniel by the collar and dragged him toward a maintenance trench as glass shattered above them.
“South exit!” Marcus shouted.
One of his agents returned fire.
The attackers had entered from both ends of the building.
This was not intimidation.
It was an execution.
Owen pointed toward a rusted freight platform.
“Tunnel beneath it.”
We crawled through smoke and debris as Marcus’s team covered us.
A bullet struck Owen’s shoulder.
He grunted but kept moving.
Daniel reached for him.
“You’re hit.”
“Later.”
We descended through a broken hatch into a narrow service tunnel.
Marcus entered last and pulled the metal cover shut above us.
The darkness was absolute.
We moved by phone light through ankle-deep water until the gunfire faded behind us.
The tunnel opened near a drainage canal half a mile away.
A second security vehicle waited on the road.
Only after we were inside did Owen allow Daniel to examine his shoulder.
“The bullet passed through,” Daniel said.
“I’ve had worse.”
“That does not make this harmless.”
Owen looked at him.
“You sound like Arthur.”
Daniel’s hands stopped.
“Do not compare me to him.”
“I meant your voice.”
Daniel resumed wrapping the wound.
He did not speak again.
We took Owen to a private medical suite owned by my company. Marcus locked down the floor and posted armed guards.
At midnight, I called Nathan.
The number had been disconnected.
I checked the private account through which I had paid him. The money had been moved three months earlier into twelve smaller accounts.
Marcus traced two of them to Halcyon-linked entities.
“You think he is working with Silas?” I asked.
“I think your brother took money from someone.”
“He always takes money.”
“Then loyalty may be negotiable.”
Nathan and I had the same father but almost nothing else.
Richard Beaumont had met Nathan’s mother during the early years of his first company. She became pregnant. He paid for an apartment, education, and silence.
I discovered Nathan’s existence while settling my father’s estate.
The first time we met, he smiled and said, “You inherited his name. I inherited his shame.”
He did not want a relationship.
He wanted compensation.
I paid because scandal would have endangered a major merger.
At least that was what I told myself.
The truth was uglier.
I paid because Nathan looked like our father, and I did not want to see what my inheritance had cost someone else.
At 2:00 a.m., Daniel stood beside the hospital window.
“You should have told me.”
“I know.”
“You always say honesty matters.”
“It does.”
“Except when you decide the truth is inefficient.”
“That is fair.”
He looked surprised by my answer.
I continued.
“I was ashamed.”
“Of Nathan?”
“Of my father. Of myself. Of paying him to disappear.”
Daniel turned toward me.
“And you thought I would judge you?”
“I thought you would see me differently.”
“I do.”
The words hurt.
He saw that.
“I don’t mean because your father had another child. I mean because you made the same choice my mother makes. You controlled the information so everyone would behave the way you preferred.”
“I know.”
He looked down.
“I don’t know who either of you are.”
“That may be because we made it difficult for you to know us.”
He sat on the edge of the desk.
For a moment, the anger between us softened into exhaustion.
Then my phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered on speaker.
Nathan’s voice said, “You should not have gone to the depot.”
Daniel looked at me.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Far enough away.”
“Are you working with Silas?”
“I am working to stay alive.”
“You met him six months ago.”
“He met me.”
“What did you give him?”
“Nothing he did not already know.”
“Did you tell him about Northbridge?”
“I told him you were considering the acquisition.”
“How did you know?”
“You told me in Boston.”
I remembered the meeting.
Nathan had asked what I was working on. I mentioned medical technology without naming the company.
“You sold a guess.”
“I sold a possibility.”
“For how much?”
“Enough.”
Daniel shook his head.
“Who is with you?” Nathan asked.
“My husband.”
“The biometric key.”
Daniel stiffened.
I said, “You know about the archive.”
“Everyone who matters knows.”
“Why did Silas send photographs of us to Evelyn?”
“To convince her you planned to leave Daniel.”
“Why?”
“Because frightened mothers are useful.”
“Did you know she would plan my abduction?”
“I knew she would do something.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one you get for free.”
I closed my eyes.
“Nathan, people are dying.”
“People have been dying since before we were born.”
“Help me stop him.”
He laughed softly.
“You still think Silas is the center of this.”
“Isn’t he?”
“No.”
“Then who is?”
A pause.
“Our father.”
“My father is dead.”
“His body is dead.”
Daniel stared at the phone.
Nathan continued.
“But the system he built is still operating. Halcyon was not a company, Claire. It was a mechanism. Silas only maintains it.”
“What mechanism?”
“One that transfers power from people who die to people who remain useful.”
“That means nothing.”
“It will when you open the archive.”
“Come in. We will protect you.”
“You could not protect yourself in your own bedroom.”
“How did Owen enter?”
“Owen did not take that photograph.”
I looked through the glass wall toward the room where Owen slept under guard.
“Who did?”
“The person in your house who never appears on your cameras.”
The call ended.
Marcus immediately began reviewing staff records, camera blind spots, and access logs.
Blackthorn House employed eight regular workers: a housekeeper, a chef, two groundskeepers, a driver, a maintenance supervisor, and two rotating cleaners.
Every one of them appeared on camera.
Except one.
Marta Ruiz, the housekeeper, had worked for us since we bought the property. She was quiet, efficient, and camera-shy. She often entered through the laundry corridor, where an old stone wall created a twelve-second blind spot between two cameras.
Marcus called the security team stationed at Blackthorn House.
No one answered.
He called again.
Nothing.
We drove there with police.
The front gate stood open.
The guards were unconscious inside the security office, drugged but alive.
The house was empty.
Marta’s room had been cleared.
On her bed lay a photograph of my father standing beside Arthur Mercer.
Between them stood a younger Evelyn.
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On the back, someone had written:
THE WIVES ALWAYS KNEW.
