Chapter 5 - The Lie Lucian Could Not Tell
The photograph was seventeen years old.
Agent Hayes enlarged it on a monitor inside the federal command center. The image showed the warehouse shortly before the fire. Daniel stood near the loading dock, half-hidden by a truck.
Behind him was a young man with dark hair and unmistakable gray eyes.
Lucian.
Emma stared at the screen.
“You said you didn’t know Daniel.”
“I didn’t.”
“You were at the warehouse.”
Lucian’s face revealed nothing, but his silence answered before he spoke.
“Yes.”
The word broke something inside her.
“You told me you wouldn’t lie.”
“I did not remember being there.”
“That is impossible.”
“I was seventeen. My father sent me to collect documents from Adrian. I arrived, heard an argument, and was struck from behind. I woke in a hospital two days later.”
“And you never wondered why?”
“My father said a rival family attacked me.”
Emma laughed bitterly. “How many lies did you believe because they were convenient?”
Lucian flinched almost invisibly.
Isabella stepped between them. “He was a child.”
“So was I.”
“Emma—”
“No.” She backed away. “Everyone keeps using protection as an excuse. Daniel protected me. My mother protected me. You protected me. Lucian protected me. And all that protection left me alone with half a life and no memory of the truth.”
She left the command room.
Lucian followed her into the corridor but stopped several feet away.
“I will not ask you to trust me.”
“Good.”
“But I will find out what happened.”
“You may have started the fire.”
His face hardened. “I would remember killing dozens of people.”
“Would you?”
The question landed cruelly, but Emma did not take it back.
Lucian looked toward the floor. “My medical records from that night were destroyed. The doctor who treated me disappeared.”
“Convenient again.”
“Yes.”
She expected anger. Instead, he looked defeated.
“I am sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
“For becoming another person who made you doubt your own mind.”
Emma’s anger faltered.
Lucian walked away before she could answer.
That evening, Agent Hayes placed Emma in a protected apartment. Lucian returned to his estate to identify the traitor. Isabella remained under federal guard.
Emma tried to sleep.
At midnight, someone slid an envelope beneath her door.
Inside was another photograph.
This one showed Lucian carrying unconscious Emma away from the warehouse while flames rose behind them.
On the back were four words.
HE SAVED YOU. THEN FORGOT.
Emma called Agent Hayes, but the hallway camera had stopped recording for exactly forty-three seconds. No fingerprints were found on the envelope.
She studied the picture.
Lucian was young, blood covering one side of his face. He held eleven-year-old Emma against his chest. Behind him, Daniel lay near the warehouse entrance.
A memory struck her with such force that she dropped the photograph.
Young Lucian was carrying her through the snow.
“Your brother is coming,” he told her.
“Don’t leave him.”
“I’ll go back.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
Then someone hit Lucian from behind.
Emma screamed.
The memory ended.
Lucian had not burned Daniel alive.
He had tried to save her.
She called him.
No answer.
She called again.
Marco answered on the fifth ring.
“Where is Lucian?”
A pause.
“Missing.”
Emma stood. “What happened?”
“We found the traitor. One of the guards opened the west gate. Adrian’s remaining men entered. Lucian stayed behind so the staff could escape.”
“Is he alive?”
“We don’t know.”
Emma ignored Agent Hayes’s instructions and left the apartment with the photograph in her coat.
Marco met her outside the Moretti estate. Smoke rose from a damaged security building, but the main house remained standing.
“We tracked a vehicle to the old Moretti shipping terminal,” he said.
“Then why are we standing here?”
“Because it’s likely a trap.”
“Everything is a trap.”
Marco stared at her. “You sound like him.”
They reached the terminal shortly before dawn.
Inside, Lucian sat bound to a chair beneath a hanging light. Blood ran from his temple. Adrian’s son, Vincent Moretti, stood nearby holding the missing pages from the ledger.
Vincent was thirty-five, handsome, polished, and almost unknown publicly. He managed charitable foundations and appeared regularly at hospitals.
Including St. Agnes.
“You killed my mother,” Emma said.
Vincent smiled. “I was eighteen. My father said Mrs. Carter would destroy our family.”
“You sent Victor to the house.”
“Yes.”
“You sewed the button onto Lucian’s shirt.”
“Also yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you needed the key. My father could not open the suitcase without you, and you would never search for it consciously.”
“So you triggered my sleepwalking.”
Vincent tapped a small device beside him. “Subsonic frequencies combined with a recording of your brother’s voice. We discovered years ago that certain sounds caused your suppressed memories to surface.”
Emma felt sick. “You made me enter Lucian’s room.”
“I guided you there. I wanted you to open the vault.”
Lucian looked up weakly. “He used you to recover the ledger.”
Vincent held up the missing pages. “And now I have what matters.”
Emma glanced toward Marco, hidden beyond the loading doors. She needed time.
“Why take Lucian?”
“Because my father’s arrest created an opening. The family empire requires a new leader.”
“You?”
“Lucian is old-fashioned. He believes rules matter. I understand that fear is more efficient.”
Lucian gave a faint, humorless smile. “You talk too much.”
Vincent struck him across the face.
Emma stepped forward. “Let him go.”
“Why? Because you love him?”
The question silenced her.
Lucian’s eyes found hers.
Vincent laughed. “How romantic. A frightened maid falls for the man whose father destroyed her family.”
Emma forced herself to remain calm. “You said the missing pages matter. What is on them?”
“Proof that Lucian’s father was not the highest person involved. Judges and politicians were only employees. The operation belonged to someone else.”
“Who?”
Vincent lifted the pages toward the flame of a lighter. “That secret dies here.”
Emma moved closer. “You spent seventeen years killing people to protect a name, and now you’re going to burn it?”
“I’m going to inherit it.”
Behind Vincent, Lucian began working one hand free from the ropes.
Emma kept talking.
“You made one mistake.”
Vincent smiled. “Only one?”
“You believed my sleepwalking made me helpless.”
She threw the black phoenix button at the hanging light.
The glass shattered.
Darkness swallowed the terminal.
Marco’s team stormed through the doors.
Gunfire erupted.
Emma dropped to the floor. Lucian overturned the chair and struck Vincent’s legs. The lighter fell, igniting spilled fuel.
Flames spread across the concrete.
Vincent grabbed Emma by the hair and dragged her toward the loading dock. She fought him, clawing at his wrist.
Lucian tackled Vincent from behind.
The three of them fell near the edge of the pier.
Vincent pulled a knife.
Lucian caught his wrist, but his strength was fading.
Emma saw the old fire again.
Daniel trapped inside.
Lucian promising to return.
This time, she refused to lose either man to the flames.
She grabbed a loose chain and struck Vincent’s arm. The knife fell into the water.
Marco reached them and pulled Vincent away.
The terminal burned behind them as federal agents secured the missing pages.
Lucian collapsed on the pier.
Emma knelt beside him.
“You came back,” she whispered.
His eyes opened slightly. “I promised.”
“That was seventeen years ago.”
“I keep promises slowly.”
Despite everything, she laughed through tears.
Then Agent Hayes approached holding the final page.
“You need to see this.”
At the top was the name of the person who had controlled the entire operation.
Senator Jonathan Kessler.
A national political figure currently campaigning for president.
Beneath his name was an active order issued only two weeks earlier.
ELIMINATE EMMA CARTER AND LUCIAN MORETTI BEFORE THE LEDGER BECOMES PUBLIC.
May you like
The conspiracy had not ended with Adrian.
It had merely begun.
