Chapter 3 - The Men Watching Me Were Searching for My Father’s Pendant, and Dominic Revealed My Father Had Been Missing for Years Before I Was Told He DiedDominic moved me to a secure apartment that night.
I hated it.
I hated the expensive furniture.
The guards outside the door.
The food someone brought without asking.
I wanted my old room.
My old life.
But I knew that had changed.
The men outside had made that impossible.
I called my aunt.
She didn't answer.
I called again.
Nothing.
Then my phone received a message.
Don't trust Dominic Russo.
A second message followed.
Your father is alive.
I stared at the screen.
My hands shook.
I showed Dominic.
His face became unreadable.
"Who sent this?"
"I don't know."
He asked for the number.
It had been routed through three encrypted systems.
"Can you trace it?"
"Eventually."
I asked:
"My father might be alive?"
Dominic hesitated.
"I don't think so."
"That's not an answer."
He sat across from me.
"Your father's death was never independently verified."
I stared.
"What?"
"The body was badly damaged."
"Why didn't anyone tell me?"
"Because your aunt signed the death records."
I felt sick.
"My aunt?"
"Yes."
"What did she know?"
"Nothing, officially."
That night, I couldn't sleep.
I kept remembering my father's face.
The smell of old paper.
The sound of his voice.
The way he used to place his hand over mine when I copied symbols.
I had spent five years believing he was gone.
Maybe I had been wrong.
At 3:12 a.m., I heard a noise.
A door.
I got up.
A figure stood at the end of the hallway.
I froze.
He disappeared before I could scream.
Dominic's guards came running.
They searched everything.
Nothing.
Then I noticed something.
A small brass mark on the floor.
A symbol.
The same as my father's pendant.
I picked it up.
It was a fragment of metal.
Part of a key.
Dominic stared.
"That's not random."
"What is it?"
"A warning."
He showed me an old photograph.
William Hart standing outside a museum.
Behind him was a woman.
I recognized her.
My mother.
My mother wasn't supposed to know anything about archaeology.
But apparently, she did.
Dominic explained.
"My father believed your mother was the one who had hidden the archive."
I stared.
"She's dead too."
"Yes."
"How did she die?"
"Your father believed she was killed because she knew too much."
I remembered her sudden illness.
The hospital.
Her last words.
Don't let them find the key.
I had forgotten.
Now everything returned.
Dominic looked at me.
"Your mother knew."
I nodded.
She had known.
She had protected me.
Then Dominic asked:
"Do you know what the pendant opens?"
I looked at it.
"No."
But deep inside, I knew.
My father had always told me:
May you like
"When the time comes, you'll know."
Perhaps the time had finally come.
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