Chapter 5 - The Brother Who Came Back From the DeadFor several seconds, the car contained nothing but rain and the sound of Rhett's breathing.
The recording ended with a click.
Isa reached for the device, but Rhett snatched it away.
“Play it again.”
She did.
The same voice. The same accusation. The same impossible words.
The person who signed that order was standing beside me.
It was Rhett himself.
“That isn't possible,” Rhett said.
“Maybe the recording was edited.”
“My father was dead before I took over the business.”
“Maybe your uncle used your name.”
Rhett looked at her. “You believe that because you want to believe it.”
“I believe it because the alternative doesn't make sense.”
He turned back toward the window.
He remembered the night of the fire in fragments: his father leaving the house in a hurry, the argument he overheard in the study, the unsigned papers spread across a desk. He had been twenty-two, angry, impatient to prove he could run the organization without his father's supervision.
Conrad had told him to sign a stack of emergency security authorizations.
Rhett had signed every page.
He had never asked what the documents contained.
“Take us to the old rail station,” Isa said suddenly.
Anton glanced at her in the mirror. “Why?”
“Because my brother will be there.”
Rhett turned sharply. “You know where he is?”
“No. But he knows where to find me.”
“That isn't an answer.”
“It's the only one I have.”
Before Rhett could question her further, his phone vibrated.
A message appeared from an unknown number.
Platform Six. Come alone if you want the rest of the truth.
Below it was a photograph of a man standing beneath the broken clock at an abandoned railway station.
Elias Voss.
Rhett recognized him immediately from the church photograph, although eight years had carved lines into his face and left a pale scar across his jaw.
“It's a trap,” Anton said.
“Probably,” Rhett replied.
“Then we shouldn't go.”
“That's exactly why we're going.”
The station had been closed for renovations that never came. Weeds pushed through cracks in the concrete, and old advertisements peeled from the walls. Wind moved through the empty platforms carrying the distant rumble of passing trains.
Rhett left Anton near the entrance and walked with Isa toward Platform Six.
A figure emerged from the shadows.
Isa stopped.
“Elias?”
The man stared at her for a moment, as if the years between them had made her difficult to recognize. Then his face broke.
He crossed the platform and embraced her carefully, avoiding her injured ribs.
“You're alive,” he whispered.
She clutched the back of his coat.
“So are you.”
“I told you to disappear.”
“I tried.”
“You should have kept running.”
“I got tired of being afraid.”
Elias closed his eyes.
Rhett watched them, feeling like an intruder in a life he hadn't known existed. This was the family Isa had buried beneath three years of careful silence.
Then Elias turned to him.
The warmth vanished from his face.
“You should have let her die.”
Rhett reached for his gun.
Isa stepped between them.
“Don't.”
Elias didn't flinch. “Eight years ago, your father promised mine that we'd be protected. Instead, he sent men to the warehouse, and everything burned.”
“My father left a recording saying he didn't order your death.”
“His recording also put your name on the order.”
“My uncle controlled the documents.”
“Then prove it.”
Rhett stared at him.
Elias took a folded paper from his coat and held it out.
It was a copy of the original security authorization, bearing Rhett's signature.
The signature was his.
The date was correct.
And at the bottom, beneath his name, was a line he had never seen before.
Execution approved by R. Valon.
Isa whispered, “That's what Conrad used to frame you.”
Elias shook his head.
“Conrad didn't just use his signature. Someone had to give him access to Rhett's office that night.”
Rhett looked at the document.
“Who?”
Elias's eyes settled on him.
“Ask the man who has been working at your side for nine years. The man who knows every password, every safe combination, and every secret your family has ever buried.”
“Marcus,” Rhett said.
“Your uncle didn't break into the system,” Elias replied. “He was given the keys.”
Rhett felt the last of his patience disappear.
“Why didn't you come to me eight years ago?”
“Because the last person who tried to tell you the truth ended up dead.”
“Who?”
Elias reached inside his coat and produced a second photograph.
It showed a woman standing beside a younger version of Isa outside a hospital.
Rhett recognized the woman's eyes immediately.
He had seen them on a photograph in his father's study for years.
The woman was his mother.
Isa stared at the picture.
“My mother told me she was dead before I was born.”
“She was alive when that photograph was taken,” Elias said.
Rhett looked up.
“Where is she now?”
His expression seemed to frighten Elias more than the question itself.
“Rhett, there's something else Conrad hasn't told you.”
“What?”
Elias stepped closer and lowered his voice.
“Your mother didn't die in the warehouse fire.”
May you like
He paused.
“She disappeared because she was trying to save you from your own family.”
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