Chapter 10 - THE TWO FATHERS
Celia led Rowan and Audrey through a pipe at the rear of the water tank.
They crawled until gunshots echoed behind them.
The pipe ended in the basement of an abandoned courthouse two blocks away.
Milo met them there.
Elias arrived twenty minutes later with blood on his collar and fury in his eyes.
“Conrad escaped,” he said.
“Again?” Rowan asked.
“He had a fourth vehicle outside the perimeter.”
“What about his men?”
“Three arrested. Two injured. One dead.”
“Did any of them talk?”
“Not yet.”
Celia placed the drives on a courtroom table.
Milo began copying the contents.
Each drive contained encrypted fragments. Audrey hummed Elara’s song while Milo mapped notes to numbers.
The first layer opened.
Financial transactions appeared across the screen.
Judges.
Police commanders.
Contractors.
Journalists.
Council officials.
Payments stretched back nearly twenty years.
Then Milo found an account registered to Hale Preservation Services.
Rowan recognized the company name.
Her father had established it as a small restoration business before she was born.
Millions had passed through the account.
“That is impossible,” she said.
Milo checked the dates.
“The deposits began two years before the Bellweather fire.”
Elias looked grim.
“Your father may have been handling Conrad’s property transfers.”
“No.”
“Records do not care what we want to believe.”
“He investigated Conrad.”
“Perhaps because he was involved.”
Rowan stepped away from the table.
Memories changed shape inside her.
Her father’s late-night meetings.
The locked cabinet in his office.
The way he always knew which officials to question.
His obsession with proving the fire was intentional.
Had it been justice?
Or guilt?
Audrey touched Rowan’s sleeve.
“My father used people until they became dangerous,” she said. “Then he threatened their families.”
Rowan pulled away.
“Do not defend him.”
“I’m not.”
“You copied Elara’s design.”
“Yes.”
“You entered my mother’s house.”
“Yes.”
“You tried to steal her letter.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Audrey’s voice broke.
“Because Conrad told me Elara was alive and would be killed unless I brought him every surviving document.”
The room fell silent.
“He showed me a video,” Audrey continued. “A woman in a hospital room. Her face was hidden, but she wore Elara’s bracelet.”
“When?”
“Three weeks ago.”
“Why didn’t you come to me?”
“Would you have believed me?”
Rowan wanted to say yes.
She could not.
Audrey sat on the courthouse bench.
“I copied the design because the coordinates were hidden inside it. Conrad said if I won, he could control the construction and find what Elara had buried. He promised he would release her afterward.”
“You believed him?”
“I needed to.”
Celia looked at Audrey without sympathy.
“You also took credit for Rowan’s work before your father threatened Elara.”
Audrey’s jaw tightened.
“Yes.”
The honesty made the admission uglier.
“I was jealous,” she said. “Rowan created everything I pretended to be able to create. When her ideas came through my studio, I used them. I told myself that my name gave them value.”
“And the memorial?”
“That was different at first. I recognized the pillars from a drawing Elara showed me before the fire. Then Rowan submitted the same structure. I understood she remembered it too.”
“You could have withdrawn.”
“I thought winning was the only way to reach the excavation.”
Rowan turned toward the screen.
The financial records kept unfolding.
Milo opened a transaction linked to the night of the fire.
A payment had been sent from Conrad’s primary shell company to Hale Preservation Services.
The amount was exactly one million dollars.
The authorization contained two digital signatures.
Conrad Vale.
Thomas Hale.
Rowan’s father.
The payment description read:
Emergency removal of archive materials before scheduled demolition.
The Bellweather fire began six hours later.
Before Rowan could process the record, Milo opened another file.
It was a scanned agreement.
Thomas Hale had signed it.
The agreement authorized Conrad’s team to enter the hall.
May you like
At the bottom, Thomas had handwritten a note.
Elara must never learn what we moved.
