Chapter 9 - We didn't run.I couldn't.
I stood there staring at the woman I had spent half my life imagining.
She looked older.
Thinner.
But she was unmistakably my mother.
She rushed toward me.
I ran into her arms.
For several seconds, the entire world disappeared.
Then she whispered:
"They found you."
I pulled back.
"You lied to me."
"I had to."
"You let me believe you were dead."
"Because if Northstar knew you remembered me, they would have killed you."
Caleb stood nearby.
My mother looked at him.
Then smiled sadly.
"Your father would have been proud of you."
Caleb stepped forward.
"You knew my father?"
"He trusted me."
"He told us he tried to destroy Northstar."
"He did."
"Why didn't you help him?"
"I did."
She looked toward the man in the suit.
"He wasn't alone."
The man smiled.
"You always loved telling half the story."
My mother ignored him.
"His name is Richard Vale."
Caleb stared.
"Vale."
"You know him?"
"My father had a lawyer named Richard Vale."
My mother nodded.
"He was more than a lawyer."
He was the architect who turned Northstar from a financial network into something monstrous.
He controlled the accounts.
He controlled the witnesses.
He controlled the police.
He controlled the information.
And he had one weakness.
The ledger.
My mother looked at me.
"Your father gave it to me."
"Where is it?"
"Inside your memory."
Caleb looked confused.
She explained.
When I was nine, Northstar discovered the ledger existed.
My mother took me to a doctor she trusted.
The doctor hid the location using a memory technique.
A sequence of images.
A song.
A number.
A room.
I had forgotten them.
But the key around my neck was designed to trigger the sequence.
I stared at the pendant.
"What happens when I remember?"
"The ledger's location."
"And then?"
"Then Northstar falls."
Vale laughed.
"You really think it is that simple?"
My mother turned.
"You already lost."
Vale's smile vanished.
"Did I?"
He looked at Caleb.
Then at Tyler.
"Ask your mother why she chose him."
Caleb frowned.
"What?"
"Why did she hide the truth about your brother?"
Marlene's secret came back to me.
Tyler.
The missing brother.
I looked at my mother.
"Was Tyler really Caleb's brother?"
My mother hesitated.
That hesitation answered everything.
Tyler looked shattered.
"No."
Caleb stared at her.
"Tell me."
She closed her eyes.
"Tyler is your brother."
"Then why did Mom say he was dead?"
"Because Marlene thought Northstar had taken him."
"Who raised him?"
"Vale."
The word hit like a hammer.
Tyler turned toward Vale.
"You?"
Vale smiled.
"You were always useful."
Tyler lunged at him.
Two guards tackled him.
Caleb tried to intervene.
Gunfire erupted.
My mother grabbed my hand.
"Now."
"Where?"
"Home."
"Why?"
"Because the first clue isn't in the cemetery."
She looked at the pendant.
"It's in the kitchen."
The same kitchen where Tyler had thrown the soup.
The same kitchen where the camera had exposed him.
My mother whispered:
"Your childhood memory begins with a bowl of soup."
I stared at her.
"Soup?"
May you like
She nodded.
"That's how you remember the ledger."
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