Chapter 11 - Blackout
Backup generators activated in eight seconds.
Longest eight seconds of my life.
Brin called immediately.
“We’re okay.”
“Our son?”
“Okay.”
“Stay there.”
“Cormack—”
“Brin.”
She went quiet.
Not because I commanded her.
Because she heard fear in my voice.
“I’m coming.”
“No.”
This time she said it.
“Finish this.”
I closed my eyes.
“You sure?”
“No. Do it anyway.”
Rafael had built his escape around my predictability.
Threaten Brin.
Threaten my son.
I would run back.
So I didn’t.
I sent Royce.
Then I followed Declan and federal agents beneath Lakefront.
Yara came too.
Nobody invited her.
Nobody managed to stop her.
The underground level predated the modern building.
Old concrete.
Steel doors.
Analog locks.
At the bottom waited Elias Vane.
“You knew this existed?” I asked.
“I designed it.”
“Then why are we following Rafael?”
“Because I don’t know what Catherine changed.”
The brass key opened the first door.
Brin’s biometric signature, transmitted through our son’s device, opened the second.
The third required a Hale blood sample.
I placed my thumb against the reader.
Rejected.
Declan tried.
Accepted.
Everyone looked at me.
Declan was the biological Hale heir.
Not me.
Rafael had spent decades believing Patrick raised me as camouflage.
Correct.
But why?
The final door opened.
Inside was no fortune.
No cash.
No weapons.
Just servers.
And one old wooden desk.
On it sat a photograph.
Patrick Hale.
Catherine Holloway.
Elias Vane.
And a fourth man.
My biological father.
I recognized him immediately.
Royce.
Not the man standing beside me.
His father.
Isaiah Cole.
Royce stared at the photograph.
“My dad worked docks.”
Elias Vane whispered:
“Your father worked for Patrick.”
Royce looked at me.
So did everyone.
Isaiah Cole had died when Royce was twelve.
If he was my father, Royce and I might be half-brothers.
The bodyguard who had protected me for fifteen years.
The man I trusted more than blood.
Might actually be blood.
Then slow applause came from behind us.
Rafael.
He held a pistol, but federal agents immediately aimed at him.
He smiled.
“You still think blood is the secret.”
“No,” Elias said.
For the first time, Rafael looked uneasy.
Elias walked toward the desk.
“The secret is what Patrick discovered about you.”
Rafael’s smile vanished.
Yara stepped forward.
“What?”
Elias looked at her.
“Your father didn’t create the Salcedo family.”
Rafael shouted:
“Enough!”
Yara flinched.
Elias continued anyway.
“He stole it.”
Then a server activated.
A video appeared.
Patrick Hale sat before the camera.
Older than I remembered him.
“If Rafael is watching this,” he said, “then I failed.”
Rafael raised the gun.
Yara suddenly stepped directly between him and the screen.
“Then fail again.”
May you like
Her father stared at her.
And for the first time, Yara Salcedo stopped looking afraid.
