Chapter 7 - Fire at the Door
The first bottle struck the porch window and exploded.
Flames climbed the curtains.
Lena shoved my mother toward the rear of the house while the officers opened fire on the SUV’s tires. Naomi grabbed the black ledger from the desk and followed me into the kitchen.
Smoke rolled across the ceiling.
A second bottle shattered against the front wall.
The attackers were not trying to frighten us.
They wanted the house, the ledger, and everyone inside reduced to ash.
“Back door!” Lena shouted.
The rear exit opened onto a narrow garden bordered by pine trees. My mother stumbled across the wet grass in bedroom slippers while smoke poured through the roof vents.
One of the masked men rounded the corner of the house.
I saw the metal bar in his hand.
He charged toward my mother.
I stepped between them.
He swung at my head.
I ducked, drove my elbow into his ribs, and kicked the side of his knee. He collapsed with a cry. The bar fell into the grass.
He grabbed my coat and pulled me down with him.
We hit the ground hard.
His mask shifted.
I recognized him.
He was one of Gregory’s groomsmen.
Paul Mercer.
At the wedding, he had raised a champagne glass and told me Gregory had never looked happier.
Now he tried to wrap both hands around my throat.
I jammed my thumb beneath his jaw and twisted until his grip loosened. Lena reached us a second later and pressed her weapon against the back of his head.
“Don’t move.”
The second attacker reached the SUV and attempted to drive away on two damaged tires.
A patrol vehicle blocked the road.
He abandoned the car and ran into the trees.
The officers followed.
My mother’s home burned behind us.
Every photograph from my childhood, every letter my father had written, and every object he had touched disappeared behind orange flames.
My mother watched without making a sound.
Paul lay facedown in the mud, his wrists cuffed.
Lena pulled off his mask.
“Who sent you?”
He smiled through bloodied teeth.
“I want a lawyer.”
“You attacked a police officer and tried to burn three women alive.”
“Then I definitely want a lawyer.”
I crouched beside him.
“Gregory will sacrifice you.”
Paul looked at me.
“He already has.”
His response was too quiet for anyone but me to hear.
“What does that mean?”
He glanced toward the burning house.
“He said the place would be empty.”
“You knew my mother lived here.”
“He said she’d been moved.”
“Who told you?”
Paul shut his mouth.
Paramedics treated the cut on my neck while firefighters fought the blaze. The second attacker escaped into the woods, but police recovered the SUV.
It had been reported stolen that morning.
Inside, officers found rope, plastic restraints, two gasoline cans, and a folder containing photographs of me.
Some had been taken before I met Gregory.
One showed me leaving my father’s funeral eleven years earlier.
Another showed me moving into my college dormitory.
A third showed me sitting in a café with Naomi at age twenty-two.
They had watched me for more than a decade.
At the bottom of the folder was a recent photograph.
It showed Gregory and me asleep in our bed.
The image had been taken from inside the bedroom.
Naomi stared at it in horror.
“When?”
I examined the bedding.
“Last month.”
The angle suggested the photographer had stood beside the closet.
I remembered waking one night to find Gregory closing the bedroom door. He told me he had heard a noise in the hallway.
I had gone back to sleep.
Lena approached holding a tablet.
“We have another problem.”
Security footage from a gas station six miles away showed the SUV stopping before the attack. The second masked man entered the store.
His face was visible.
Martin Shaw.
My family’s attorney had helped attack my mother’s house.
“He knew the ledger was here,” I said.
“He may have been the person who returned it,” Lena replied.
“Why give it back and then burn it?”
“To control what you saw.”
Naomi opened the notebook to the marked page.
“Maybe some pages are missing.”
We examined the binding.
Several sheets had been cut out near the back.
My father’s most dangerous records were still somewhere else.
Paul was placed in a patrol car.
Before the door closed, he called my name.
I walked toward him.
Lena stayed beside me.
Paul leaned close to the open window.
“You think Gregory is running this.”
“Isn’t he?”
“He wants you to think he is.”
“Who is really in control?”
His eyes shifted toward my mother.
“The woman who chose her son over yours.”
My mother’s expression changed.
“What is he talking about?” I asked.
Paul smiled.
“Ask Margaret what happened to the baby.”
The patrol officer closed the door.
My mother turned away.
I followed her.
“What baby?”
“Not here.”
“My house was invaded. Your house was burned. I’m being framed for financial crimes, and my husband tried to gain control of a secret trust. There is no better place.”
She looked at the firefighters, officers, and paramedics surrounding us.
Then she said, “You had a brother.”
I stopped breathing.
“He was born when you were three,” she continued. “His name was Daniel.”
“I don’t remember him.”
“You never met him. The hospital told us he died shortly after birth.”
The language was familiar.
Too familiar.
A child declared dead before the parents could see him.
A sealed coffin.
Records controlled by powerful people.
“Did you see his body?”
“No.”
“What does this have to do with Lydia?”
“She was at the hospital.”
“Why?”
“Because Daniel wasn’t your father’s son.”
The world narrowed to my mother’s face.
“Whose son was he?”
She looked at the burning house.
“Alexander Halston’s.”
Gregory’s father.
Which meant the infant who supposedly died had been Gregory’s half brother.
My mother covered her face.
“Alexander told Lydia he planned to leave her. She found out about the baby. After Daniel was born, she came to my room and said he had stopped breathing.”
“You believed her?”
“I had been sedated. Thomas arrived after they had taken the child away.”
“Where is Daniel buried?”
“There is no grave.”
“Why not?”
“Because Lydia said Halston handled the remains privately.”
A firefighter emerged from the house carrying a scorched metal box.
He placed it on the lawn.
The lock had melted, but the contents survived.
Inside were hospital documents bearing Daniel Hart’s name.
And beneath them was a recent photograph of a man standing outside Halston headquarters.
He was in his early thirties.
He had my father’s eyes.
May you like
On the back, someone had written:
DANIEL IS ALIVE. GREGORY KNOWS WHERE HE IS.
