Chapter 9 - THE BROTHER BURIED WITHOUT A GRAVE
No public record listed Sebastian Hart as Theodore’s brother.
Nathaniel’s intelligence team found traces only after searching sealed adoption files and private school archives.
Sebastian had been born eighteen months after Theodore.
At the age of seven, he was sent away following an incident at Hart Manor.
The records described it as a domestic tragedy.
No details remained.
At nineteen, Sebastian changed his surname.
At twenty-five, he vanished.
Amelia sat across from Nathaniel in a secure operations room.
Their personal conflict remained unresolved, but Margaret Quinn’s murder left no space for distance.
“Is Sebastian alive?” Amelia asked.
“We do not know.”
“Could he be running Orpheus?”
“Possibly.”
“Could he have become Victor?”
“No. We confirmed Victor’s identity through childhood records.”
Amelia looked at the photograph.
“Then why erase Sebastian?”
“Your grandfather may have disowned him.”
“For what?”
Nathaniel placed a scanned newspaper clipping on the screen.
A fire had occurred at Hart Manor forty-eight years earlier.
One household employee died.
A seven-year-old boy suffered severe burns.
The family released no name.
“The boy was Sebastian,” Nathaniel said.
“And the dead employee?”
“A nanny named Eleanor Price.”
Amelia read the faded article.
“Did Sebastian start the fire?”
“The police suspected arson.”
“At seven?”
“The case was closed after your grandfather intervened.”
Amelia leaned back.
“My father never spoke about any of this.”
“People often bury the secrets that formed them.”
“Secrets do not stay buried.”
Nathaniel met her eyes.
“No.”
The word carried more than one meaning.
Amelia looked away.
“What about the angel statue?”
“I sent a team to secure the grounds.”
Her phone rang.
The security commander’s voice came through.
“Colonel, the statue is gone.”
Amelia stood.
“Gone?”
“Removed recently. The soil is fresh.”
“Search the property.”
“We already found something.”
A photograph arrived on Amelia’s phone.
Beneath the empty stone base was a metal box.
Inside lay no list.
Only a human finger bone wrapped in military cloth.
Amelia stared at the image.
Nathaniel examined it.
“The cloth is old.”
A small brass insignia was pinned to the fabric.
Amelia recognized it.
The symbol belonged to a private security unit once contracted by Hart Meridian.
Nathaniel searched the unit records.
The company had been led by a man named Samuel Kane.
Kane disappeared twenty years earlier.
The same year Amelia’s mother died.
“Find him,” Amelia said.
Nathaniel’s team located Samuel Kane’s daughter in Baltimore.
Her name was Evelyn Kane. She worked as a forensic accountant.
Amelia contacted her through an encrypted channel.
At first, Evelyn refused to speak.
Then Amelia mentioned Project Orpheus.
Evelyn agreed to meet.
They chose a crowded railway station.
Evelyn was in her forties, with short dark hair and a scar along her chin. She carried no bag.
“My father was not a criminal,” she said.
“I did not say he was.”
“Everyone who mentions Orpheus eventually does.”
“What happened to him?”
“He discovered the project continued after your mother’s death.”
“Who controlled it?”
“He never told me the name.”
“Why?”
“He was trying to protect me.”
Amelia understood the phrase too well.
Evelyn glanced around the station.
“Two days before he disappeared, he gave me an account number.”
She wrote it on the back of a ticket.
“Money from every Orpheus shipment passed through that account.”
Nathaniel, monitoring from a distance, ran the number immediately.
The account belonged to a foundation.
The Hart Family Relief Trust.
Amelia stared at the result.
The charity had been established by her grandmother and controlled for decades by Theodore.
“Was my father funding Orpheus?” she asked.
Evelyn shook her head.
“Accounts can be used without the named owner knowing.”
“Who had signing authority?”
Evelyn looked directly at her.
“Your father.”
“Who else?”
“One other person.”
“Cassandra?”
“No.”
“Julian?”
“No.”
Evelyn hesitated.
“Amelia Hart.”
Amelia felt cold spread through her.
“That is impossible.”
“The signature records began when you were seventeen.”
“I never signed anything.”
“Then someone created a financial identity in your name.”
Nathaniel approached from the crowd.
Evelyn saw him and stepped back.
“You brought a Blackwood.”
“He is my husband.”
Her expression changed.
“Then you are already inside the trap.”
Before Amelia could respond, the station lights went out.
Emergency alarms sounded.
People shouted.
Nathaniel reached for Amelia.
A body struck him from the side.
Amelia heard Evelyn cry out.
When the lights returned twenty seconds later, Evelyn was gone.
On the ground where she had stood lay the railway ticket.
May you like
A new message had been written beneath the account number.
Ask your father why you died at age seventeen.
