CHAPTER 8
Midnight.
River Road.
The old textile mill loomed against the night sky like a skeleton. Broken windows stared like hollow eyes. The river rushed beside it, black and cold and loud enough to drown out screams.
My father drove. I sat in the passenger seat. We were alone, just as they’d demanded. No security. No police following close behind. But I knew Inspector Moreau and her team were out there, hidden in the trees, waiting.
The leather briefcase on my lap was heavy.
Inside were the stock certificates. The deeds. The keys to the kingdom. Everything they’d asked for.
Everything they’d killed for.
My father parked at the gate and turned off the engine.
“Ready?” he asked. His hand was steady on the wheel, but I could see the tremor in his jaw.
I thought of Liam in that video. Scared. Alone. A pawn in someone else’s war. He was my brother. He shared my blood. And even though he’d been raised to hate me, I couldn’t help but feel something for him. A pull. A need to protect him the way an older sister should.
“Ready,” I said.
We walked through the rusted gates. The gravel crunched under our shoes. Every shadow seemed to move. Every sound was amplified.
The main doors of the mill stood open.
A single bare bulb burned deep inside, swinging in the draft, casting long, dancing shadows across the concrete floor.
“Julian!”
Richard Torres stepped out of the darkness.
He looked older than his pictures. Gaunt. Worn. But his eyes burned with the same fire I’d seen in his daughter’s. Amber stood beside him, beautiful and deadly as a cobra. And behind them, tied to a metal support beam, was Liam.
He looked up when we entered.
His eyes locked with mine.
For a second, I saw it. Recognition. The same eyes. The same shape of the face. We could have been twins, separated at birth. Which, in a way, we had been.
“Richard,” my father said, his voice calm. “We brought what you wanted. Let the boy go.”
Richard laughed—a harsh, barking sound.
“The boy? He’s not just a boy, Julian. He’s your son. Your flesh and blood. And for twenty-two years, you forgot he existed. You played happy families with your little princess here while my wife and I raised him, fed him, loved him. While we told him bedtime stories about the parents who threw him away like garbage.”
He stepped forward.
“You think this is about money? You think this is about some stupid fashion house? This is about JUSTICE! You took my career. My reputation. My future! And now I’m taking yours. Everything you built. Everything you love. It all belongs to me now.”
Amber stepped forward too, her eyes fixed on me.
“Give me the briefcase, Elara,” she said, holding out her hand. “And maybe… if you’re very good… we’ll let you and Daddy live long enough to see Liam take his rightful place on the Vaucluse throne.”
I didn’t move.
“Untie him first,” I said.
Amber smiled.
“Brave words from the girl who used to clean my toilets. But no. You don’t get to make demands here. The briefcase. Now. Or I put a bullet in your brother’s knee and we start working our way up.”
She pulled a gun from her waistband and pressed it to Liam’s temple.
Liam flinched. His eyes never left mine.
“Okay,” I said, lifting the briefcase. “Okay. Here.”
I took two steps forward.
And then I stopped.
“Before I give it to you,” I said, my voice ringing through the empty mill, “I want Liam to know the truth. All of it. Not the lies you’ve been feeding him his whole life.”
Richard’s face darkened.
“Shut her up, Amber.”
“Wait,” Liam said.
His voice was rough from disuse, but strong.
“I want to hear it.”
Amber hesitated, the gun still pressed to his head.
I took a breath.
“Your parents—Richard and Maria—they couldn’t have children. My mom and dad were kids when they had you. Nineteen and twenty. Scared. Broke. Living in a one-bedroom apartment above a laundromat. They thought they were doing the right thing. They thought you’d have a better life with two parents who were stable, who had money, who could give you everything they couldn’t.”
I looked directly at him.
“They never forgot you. Not for one day. Every birthday, every Christmas, every school play… my dad was there. Hiding in the back of the auditorium. Crying because he couldn’t hold you. He paid for every school. Every doctor. Every single thing you ever had. Because he loved you. He never stopped loving you.”
“LIES!” Richard roared. “She’s lying, Liam! They abandoned you! They didn’t care if you lived or died!”
“Then why,” I said, reaching into my pocket, “did my mother write you a letter every single year of your life? Letters she never sent because she was afraid of hurting you. Afraid of disrupting the life she thought you deserved.”
I pulled out a thick stack of envelopes, tied with blue ribbon.
“I found them after she died. In a locked box under her bed. Addressed to you. Every one. ‘To my son, wherever you are. Know that you are loved.’”
I tossed the letters toward him. They scattered across the concrete at his feet.
Liam was staring at the envelopes, tears streaming freely down his face.
“Your mother was going to tell you,” I said softly. “The week she died. She’d finally worked up the courage. She was going to meet you. Tell you everything. Bring you home. And Richard… Richard killed her to stop her. Because if you knew the truth… if you knew you were already loved… you’d never be his puppet. You’d never help him steal from the family that never stopped loving you.”
The mill went silent.
Amber’s hand was shaking on the gun.
Richard’s face had turned purple with rage.
“Kill them,” he spat at Amber. “Kill them both! Now!”
Amber raised the gun.
Time slowed.
I saw her finger tighten on the trigger.
I saw my father lunge forward.
I saw Liam—still tied to the beam—throw his body sideways, knocking Amber’s arm up just as she fired.
The bullet ricocheted off the ceiling.
Chaos erupted.
Lights blazed from every window.
“POLICE! DROP YOUR WEAPONS!”
Inspector Moreau’s team stormed the mill from every entrance. Black uniforms. Shields. Guns drawn.
Richard tried to run for the back door. Two officers tackled him before he made three steps.
Amber scrambled for the gun she’d dropped. I dove for it too. Our hands met on the cold metal at the same time.
We rolled across the concrete, fighting. She was stronger than she looked. Filled with rage and desperation. She clawed at my face. I kneed her in the stomach. The gun skittered away.
We both went for it.
She got there first.
She spun around, aiming directly at my chest.
May you like
“Goodbye, sister,” she snarled.
The gunshot was deafening.
