Chapter 4 - The Photograph in Damian’s Safe
The emergency lights flickered on.
Marianne stood in the hallway.
Beside her was an elderly man.
Damian raised his weapon.
“Samuel Brooks.”
Hazel stared.
“My grandfather?”
The old man looked at her.
“Hello, Hazel.”
Her mother had told her Samuel died before she was born.
Apparently death was becoming unusually reversible.
Hazel didn't hug him.
She didn't move.
“Why did my mother tell me you were dead?”
“To protect you.”
Hazel laughed once.
“I’m beginning to hate that sentence.”
Samuel looked at Damian.
“You have Elena’s photograph?”
Damian showed it.
Samuel nodded.
“She knew.”
“Knew what?”
“That the bombing wasn't ordered by Sullivan.”
Damian’s face became stone.
“Careful.”
“I have proof.”
Samuel produced an old memory card.
Marco checked him for weapons before taking it.
The footage showed a garage.
Damian recognized his car.
A man approached it.
Placed something beneath the chassis.
Then looked toward the camera.
Damian stopped breathing.
The man worked for Damian’s father.
Vittorio Romano.
Vittorio had died two years ago.
Hazel watched Damian absorb the possibility that his own father had ordered the explosion that killed Elena.
“Why?” he asked.
Samuel answered.
“Because Elena found the archive.”
The archive again.
Sarah Brooks had discovered that the Romanos and Sullivans had secretly shared businesses for decades.
The public feud concealed financial arrangements.
Elena learned the truth.
She planned to expose it.
Vittorio stopped her.
Damian sat down.
Hazel had never seen him look vulnerable.
She moved beside him.
Her hand hovered.
Then touched his.
Damian looked at their joined hands.
He didn't pull away.
Samuel noticed.
So did Marianne.
Nobody commented.
The memory card contained only part of the evidence.
The rest was inside Sarah’s archive.
And Hazel was still the key.
“Where is it?” Damian asked.
Samuel looked at Hazel.
“Her mother built the answer into something Hazel would remember.”
Hazel shook her head.
“I don't.”
“You will.”
Samuel gave her a photograph.
Hazel as a child.
Sarah stood behind her.
They were outside a library.
Hazel remembered.
Her mother took her there every Saturday.
Same table.
Same book.
Same ritual.
Hazel whispered, “The Little Prince.”
Samuel nodded.
“Page?”
“Seventeen.”
“Line?”
Hazel remembered her mother making a game of it.
“Four.”
Marco looked confused.
“What does it mean?”
Hazel looked at the bracelet.
W.S.B.
Page seventeen.
Line four.
A childhood memory had just become a password.
They drove to the old library before sunrise.
The building had been closed for renovation.
Damian refused to let Hazel enter alone.
Inside, dust covered everything.
Hazel found the shelf.
The book remained there.
Inside page seventeen was a library card.
Sarah Brooks.
On the back:
Locker 317 stood in the basement.
Hazel opened it with her bracelet.
Inside was a metal box.
Damian watched.
Hazel lifted the lid.
Empty.
Except for another photograph.
Elena.
Alive.
Standing beside Sarah Brooks.
Hazel stared.
“That’s impossible.”
Sarah had died eight years before Elena.
Yet the date printed on the photograph was only five years old.
Damian turned it over.
One sentence.
SARAH BROOKS IS NOT DEAD.
Hazel’s hands began shaking.
Then a telephone rang somewhere inside the abandoned library.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
They followed the sound downstairs.
An old desk phone sat beneath a lamp that had not been on moments earlier.
Hazel reached for the receiver.
Damian caught her hand.
“I'll answer.”
The ringing stopped.
A red light appeared on the basement door.
Someone had locked it from the other side.
Then Hazel heard a woman whisper through the door.
“Sweetheart?”
Hazel went completely still.
May you like
Only one person had ever called her that way.
Her mother.
