Chapter 10 - Isabella's Missing Twenty Years
We reached Brooks & Bloom to find Kayla alive.
Marcus and Claire were gone.
The cooler was empty.
But the hidden maintenance corridor had been opened again.
This time, we followed it farther.
Behind the neighboring building was an old basement room.
My mother had used it.
Boxes lined the walls.
Letters.
Photographs.
Evidence.
And a diary belonging to Isabella.
Twenty missing years.
Isabella had known far more than she'd admitted.
She had tracked Celeste.
She had secretly funded Daniel while he hid.
She had also paid my mother's mortgage twice when the flower shop nearly failed.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because your mother made me promise."
I was getting tired of promises made on my behalf.
Isabella accepted my anger.
She didn't defend herself.
That helped.
Her diary contained one final revelation.
Marcus was not merely Adrian's adviser.
He was Celeste's son.
Half-brother to Vanessa and Claire.
The three children had been raised separately.
Three tools for three purposes.
Vanessa provided social access.
Claire supplied identities.
Marcus entered the Moretti organization.
Celeste hadn't infiltrated one family.
She had built her own inside it.
Adrian looked physically sick.
Marcus had been beside him since he was a teenager.
At funerals.
Weddings.
Business meetings.
Family dinners.
Betrayal is most effective when it learns where you keep the spare key.
A letter inside Isabella's diary was addressed to Adrian.
Marcus had written it twenty years earlier.
He was young.
Scared.
He begged Isabella to help him escape Celeste.
She never received it.
Celeste intercepted it.
That changed Adrian's understanding of him.
Not mine.
Marcus had made choices after becoming an adult.
Pain explains.
It doesn't erase.
My phone rang.
Marcus.
Adrian answered.
"Where are you?"
Marcus laughed softly.
"You still sound like your father when you're angry."
"What do you want?"
"Amelia."
I took the phone.
"Here."
"You have something your mother stole from mine."
"Take a number."
"The original account key."
I looked at Isabella.
She shook her head.
I had no idea what he meant.
Marcus continued.
"Ask Isabella what Evelyn hid inside Amelia's first bouquet."
Isabella's face went white.
"My first bouquet?"
She whispered.
"The dried flowers."
I remembered them.
My mother preserved the first bouquet I ever made.
It still hung in a glass shadow box above the back office door.
I took it down.
Behind the dried daisies was a tiny metal capsule.
Inside was a strip of paper.
Twenty-four handwritten words.
A recovery phrase.
Adrian stared.
"Crypto wallet."
Marcus called again.
"Now you understand."
"How much?"
"Enough that thirty-eight million dollars looks like lunch money."
Then somebody knocked on the shop's locked front door.
Claire stood outside.
Alone.
Covered in blood.
She lifted both hands.
May you like
"Marcus has Vanessa."
Then she collapsed.
