Chapter 7 - The Uncle Who Inherited Everything
Richard Vale stood beyond the porch with six armed men.
Behind him, the Atlantic crashed against black rocks.
Eleanor lay bleeding across the wooden floor.
Arabella dropped beside her.
“Stay with me.”
Eleanor struggled to breathe. The bullet had entered near her shoulder, but blood pooled rapidly beneath her.
Dante pulled Arabella behind the stone wall as another shot struck the porch.
Richard raised one hand.
His men stopped firing.
“I did not come to kill my niece,” he called.
Dante aimed through the broken window.
“You hired a sniper.”
“To frighten you into giving her back.”
“You missed.”
“I rarely miss.”
Arabella pressed a towel against Eleanor’s wound.
“Why do you need me alive?” she shouted.
Richard smiled.
“You always were direct.”
“Answer me.”
“The implant carries an encryption key your father stole.”
“For what?”
“A network worth more than Vale Maritime.”
Eleanor gripped Arabella’s wrist.
“Don’t listen.”
Richard continued, “Your father was not the hero you remember. Lazarus began as his project.”
Arabella looked down at Eleanor.
“Is that true?”
Eleanor’s silence answered first.
“Charles funded the research,” she admitted. “At the beginning.”
Dante’s eyes hardened.
Richard stepped closer.
“The program was designed to treat traumatic memory. Soldiers. Hostages. Children rescued from abuse. Your father believed memories could be softened without destroying identity.”
“And you turned people into weapons,” Eleanor said.
“I improved the business model.”
Arabella felt sick.
“My father tried to stop you.”
“He tried to steal everything and expose us. So yes, I arranged the yacht explosion.”
The confession came without shame.
“You killed him.”
Richard’s smile faded.
“Your father chose to die. He could have surrendered the key.”
Arabella touched the scar behind her ear.
“You put it in me.”
“Charles did. Hours before the explosion. He believed you were the only person I would not harm.”
Richard glanced at Eleanor’s blood.
“He underestimated me.”
Dante’s men circled through the woods.
Richard seemed unconcerned.
“You cannot escape the island road,” he said. “My people control it.”
Dante fired.
Richard’s bodyguard moved first and took the bullet.
The woods erupted with gunfire.
Dante dragged Eleanor and Arabella inside.
Windows shattered. Plaster fell from the walls.
“Back exit?” Dante demanded.
Eleanor pointed toward the kitchen.
“Cellar.”
They descended through a trapdoor beneath the pantry.
The cellar smelled of salt, oil, and old wood.
Eleanor was losing consciousness.
“There’s a tunnel to the cliff,” she whispered.
Dante carried her while Arabella led the way with a flashlight.
The passage narrowed until they moved single file.
Behind them, boots entered the house.
Richard’s men had found the trapdoor.
The tunnel opened inside a sea cave.
A small motorboat waited at a rusted dock.
Dante lowered Eleanor into it.
Arabella started the engine instinctively.
“You know boats,” Dante said.
“My body remembers things my mind doesn’t.”
Bullets struck the cave wall.
Dante returned fire as Arabella drove the boat into the open water.
The ocean was violent.
Waves lifted them and slammed them down.
Richard’s men reached the cave dock, but their shots fell short.
Arabella steered toward a fishing harbor two miles south.
Eleanor’s breathing weakened.
She pulled Dante closer.
“Luca,” she whispered.
“Where is he?”
“Facility Nine.”
“Where?”
“Under Vale Tower.”
Dante stared at her.
Vale Tower stood in lower Manhattan.
One of the most secure corporate buildings in America.
Eleanor reached inside her coat and removed a bloodstained access card.
“Richard keeps failed subjects beneath his own office. People the world believes dead.”
Arabella’s hand tightened on the wheel.
“How many?”
“Thirty-one.”
“Why keep them alive?”
“Their skills. Their knowledge. Leverage against families.”
Eleanor looked at Arabella.
“You were different. The implant does not only contain an encryption key. It contains evidence.”
“What evidence?”
“Names. Payments. recordings. Everyone who funded Lazarus.”
“Can it be removed?”
“Yes. But not by Richard.”
The boat entered calmer water.
A Coast Guard vessel appeared in the distance.
Dante did not trust federal authorities. Not after learning Lazarus had government contractors in its files.
He called Rosa instead.
A helicopter reached them twenty minutes later.
Eleanor survived the flight but went into surgery at Dante’s private clinic.
Arabella waited outside the operating room.
Dante stood near the window, blood drying on his shirt.
“You should change,” she said.
“So should you.”
Neither moved.
“Your brother is alive,” Arabella said.
“If Eleanor is telling the truth.”
“You think she lied?”
“I think hope makes people stupid.”
“And grief?”
“Grief makes them dangerous.”
She looked at him.
“Is that why people fear you?”
“No. They fear me because I make examples.”
Arabella walked closer.
“What will you do to Richard?”
“Whatever remains after I find Luca.”
She should have been frightened by the answer.
Instead, she understood it.
A nurse emerged.
“Dr. Shaw is stable.”
Arabella exhaled.
The nurse handed Dante a sealed evidence bag removed from Eleanor’s coat.
Inside was a flash drive.
Maya decrypted it that evening.
The drive contained floor plans for Facility Nine beneath Vale Tower. It also contained a list of current subjects.
Luca Serrano was there.
So was Katherine Vale.
Arabella’s mother.
The woman supposedly murdered nineteen years earlier.
Arabella stared at the name.
“My mother is alive.”
Maya opened the associated file.
No photograph.
Only a note:
SUBJECT ONE REMAINS NONCOMPLIANT.
CONTINUED ISOLATION AUTHORIZED.
Arabella looked at Dante.
“We’re going into Vale Tower.”
“It’s guarded by federal contractors.”
“My mother is there.”
“And my brother.”
Dante loaded his gun.
“Then we’re not going in through the front door.”
Before they could plan further, every television in the clinic changed to a live news broadcast.
Richard Vale stood before cameras outside his Manhattan headquarters.
“My niece, Arabella Vale, is alive,” he announced.
Reporters shouted.
Richard’s face filled the screen with practiced sorrow.
“She has suffered severe mental illness and has been abducted by the criminal Dante Serrano.”
A photograph of Dante appeared behind him.
“I am begging law enforcement to rescue her before Mr. Serrano exploits her condition.”
Arabella watched police vehicles surround Dante’s businesses across the city.
Richard had turned the world against them.
May you like
Then he looked directly into the camera.
“Bella,” he said, “come home.”
