Chapter 5 - The Man Who Guarded My FamilyVince Had Been Lying for Fourteen Months
We didn't leave the cellar.
Instead, we locked the door and demanded answers.
Vince finally sat.
His shoulders seemed ten years older.
“Thomas didn't trust the board,” he said.
“He didn't trust our father.”
I stared.
“Our father was dead before Thomas.”
“I know.”
“Then what are you saying?”
Vince rubbed his face.
“Your father didn't die naturally.”
I said nothing.
Mara's breath caught.
Vince continued.
“Thomas discovered financial transfers from an offshore account connected to your father's estate.”
“How much?”
“Thirty-eight million.”
My chest tightened.
“Where did it go?”
“Into Hollow Pine subsidiaries.”
“For what?”
“Bribes.”
The word echoed.
I thought of every board meeting.
Every smiling executive.
Every person who had told me my father's generation had built Hollow Pine through hard work.
Vince looked at Mara.
“Daniel was one of the people who found the money trail.”
“So they killed him.”
“Yes.”
“And Thomas.”
“Yes.”
“And you're still alive.”
Vince smiled without humor.
“Barely.”
I stood.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because Thomas made me promise.”
“What promise?”
“To keep you ignorant until the trust activated.”
I stared at him.
“That makes no sense.”
“It does when you know what happened the night of the crash.”
My pulse quickened.
Vince took out a flash drive.
“Your brother believed someone had sabotaged the vehicle.”
“Brake failure.”
“Exactly.”
“But the investigators ruled it accidental.”
“They were paid.”
“Who?”
Vince hesitated.
“Your uncle Richard.”
The name hit harder than I expected.
Richard had spent fourteen months telling me to let Thomas rest.
He had hugged me at the funeral.
He had cried beside the grave.
He had visited me in the hospital.
And every time, he told me:
“We are all you have left.”
I suddenly felt sick.
Mara stood.
“There is something else.”
“What?”
She looked at the flash drive.
“Daniel said Thomas wasn't the first victim.”
Vince stared at her.
“Who else?”
She shook her head.
“Children.”
Silence.
“What children?”
“Patients from the rehabilitation center.”
My eyes narrowed.
“How are they connected to Hollow Pine?”
“They weren't.”
“Then why were they targets?”
Mara's voice dropped.
“Because some of them were witnesses.”
“To what?”
She looked at me.
“A private medical program funded through Hollow Pine.”
My skin prickled.
“What program?”
“Experimental neurological treatments.”
I looked at my injured shoulder.
The tremor.
The numbness.
The strange way my body had changed since the accident.
Mara's expression said she was thinking the same thing.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
She stepped closer.
“Because your symptoms don't match a normal shoulder fracture.”
“What?”
“Your tremor. Muscle instability. Nerve response. They're not typical.”
“I've had specialists.”
“Specialists can miss things.”
Vince stared at her.
“You think he was exposed to something?”
Mara didn't answer.
She didn't need to.
My mind replayed the accident.
The smoke.
The rain.
The smell of metal.
The paramedics.
A syringe.
I suddenly remembered something I hadn't thought about in fourteen months.
Someone had injected me before the ambulance left.
Not a doctor.
A stranger wearing black gloves.
I looked at Mara.
“Can you identify what was in my system?”
“I can try.”
“How?”
She opened the flash drive.
“There are lab reports here.”
I swallowed.
“Whose?”
She looked at me.
“Yours.”
My heart stopped.
Then the cellar door unlocked by itself.
May you like
And a voice spoke from the darkness beyond it.
“Too late.”
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