Chapter 4 - The Father Who Never Died
“Grace.”
One word.
Twenty-two years disappeared.
Grace dropped the phone.
Dominic caught it.
She could not breathe.
“My father is alive.”
Dominic replayed the video.
Michael Walker looked older, thinner, gray-haired.
But unmistakably alive.
Grace turned on Dominic.
“You knew.”
“No.”
“You hesitated when I showed you the photograph.”
“Because I knew there had been rumors.”
“What rumors?”
“That Michael survived the attack.”
“And you never told me?”
“I spent years trying to prove them.”
Grace slapped him.
The sound cracked through the room.
Marcus entered.
Dominic raised a hand.
“Leave.”
Marcus obeyed.
Grace’s eyes filled with tears.
“You watched me mourn him.”
“Yes.”
“You watched my mother die believing he was gone.”
“I don’t know what Catherine believed.”
Grace stepped backward.
“I trusted you.”
Dominic’s face tightened.
“You shouldn’t have.”
The answer hurt because it sounded like self-punishment.
Grace left.
She made it halfway down the corridor before Dominic followed.
Barefoot.
Hospital robe open over his bandages.
“You’re going to tear your stitches.”
“Then stop walking.”
She turned.
“You don’t get to order me around.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying that!”
People stared.
Dominic did not care.
“I failed your father.”
Grace froze.
“I spent twenty-two years thinking Michael died because he protected me. If he survived and I failed to find him, then I failed him twice.”
Grace looked at the man before her.
For once, Dominic Vale looked powerless.
“What do we do?”
“We bring him home.”
The message contained coordinates.
An abandoned church outside Boston.
Marcus called it an obvious trap.
Dominic agreed.
They went anyway.
Grace insisted.
At the church, they found no Michael.
Only Elias.
Dominic’s half brother stepped from behind the altar.
He resembled Dominic enough to be unsettling.
Older.
Thinner.
A scar along his jaw.
“Little brother.”
Dominic raised his gun.
“Where is Michael?”
“Alive.”
Grace stepped forward.
“Where?”
Elias smiled.
“Your father always said you were fearless.”
“You knew him.”
“He worked for me.”
Dominic’s face changed.
Elias continued.
“Michael discovered Victor’s operation. But he also discovered Dominic’s father knew about it.”
Dominic shook his head.
“You’re lying.”
“Our father wasn’t innocent.”
Elias tossed a file onto the altar.
Financial records.
Photographs.
Orders.
Dominic read them.
His expression collapsed.
His father had authorized Michael’s execution.
But Michael escaped.
Catherine helped fake his death.
“Why didn’t he come back?” Grace whispered.
Elias looked at her.
“Because returning would have killed you.”
Grace’s tears came silently.
“Where is he?”
“Victor kept him hidden.”
“Victor is alive?”
Elias smiled.
“You’re finally asking the right questions.”
Gunfire erupted outside.
Elias vanished through a side door.
Marcus shouted.
Dominic pulled Grace behind the stone altar.
Bullets struck wood.
When silence returned, Elias was gone.
But he had left something behind.
A phone.
One number was saved.
Grace called it.
A man answered.
“Grace?”
Her knees nearly gave out.
“Dad?”
Silence.
Then crying.
A grown man crying.
“My little girl.”
Grace covered her mouth.
Dominic turned away, giving her privacy.
“Where are you?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Please.”
“They’ll kill you.”
“Who?”
“Victor.”
Grace closed her eyes.
“Dad, Dominic is with me.”
Michael went silent.
Then his voice hardened.
“Get away from him.”
Grace looked at Dominic.
“Why?”
“Because Dominic doesn’t know the truth about the night he was shot.”
“What truth?”
“The bullets weren’t meant to kill him.”
Grace’s stomach tightened.
“What were they meant to do?”
“To bring you to him.”
The call ended.
Grace stared at Dominic.
Someone had engineered everything.
The shooting.
The hospital.
Their meeting.
“Who knew I worked at St. Bartholomew’s?” she asked.
Marcus answered.
“Anyone could.”
“No. Who knew Dominic would be taken there?”
Silence.
Marcus’s face changed.
Dominic understood.
“Someone inside my organization.”
A message arrived.
Michael again.
THIS STARTED BEFORE THE SHOOTING.
Another.
CHECK GRACE’S EMPLOYMENT RECORD.
Grace opened her hospital employee file.
Her assignment history had been altered.
Three months earlier, someone had transferred her permanently onto the trauma rotation.
The authorization bore the signature of the hospital’s chief administrator.
Grace whispered his name.
“Dr. Samuel Price.”
Dominic looked at Marcus.
“Bring him to me.”
Marcus made one call.
Then stopped.
His face went still.
“What?”
“Price disappeared tonight.”
Grace’s phone rang.
No caller ID.
She answered.
A familiar voice spoke.
Her brother.
“Grace?”
“Noah?”
He sounded terrified.
“There are men in the apartment.”
Grace stood.
“Noah, get out.”
“I can’t.”
A second voice came onto the line.
Older.
Calm.
“Miss Walker.”
Dominic’s face hardened.
Grace whispered, “Victor.”
The man laughed softly.
“Bring Dominic’s ledger to Pier Nine by midnight.”
“If you hurt Noah—”
“You have forty-seven minutes.”
The line went dead.
Grace turned toward Dominic.
“We’re going.”
“No.”
“That’s my brother.”
“And it’s a trap.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do.”
Dominic caught her hand.
Grace looked down.
His grip was gentle.
“Grace, I will get Noah back.”
“How?”
Dominic’s gray eyes became cold.
“By becoming the man everyone thinks I am.”
Forty minutes later, Grace stood inside a warehouse at Pier Nine.
Dominic was beside her.
Marcus and his men waited outside.
A light switched on.
Noah sat tied to a chair.
A gun pressed against his head.
The man holding it stepped forward.
Grace had seen his face before.
In photographs.
At her mother’s funeral.
She whispered, “Uncle David?”
The man smiled.
But Dominic stared past him.
At someone emerging from the darkness.
May you like
Michael Walker walked toward his daughter.
And he was holding the gun...
