Chapter 8 - The Last Betrayal
The next forty-eight hours became a blur.
Federal investigators secured the hotel.
Accounts were frozen.
Companies were searched.
Dozens of arrests were made.
William Hart vanished.
Adrian Gray vanished.
Clare stayed in a protected apartment.
Nicholas refused to leave her side.
He slept in a chair outside her room.
Sometimes she woke and found him staring through the window.
"You don't sleep."
"I do."
"That's a lie."
"Fine."
She smiled.
It was the first peaceful smile she'd managed in days.
Their relationship remained strange.
Father and daughter.
Strangers.
Family.
All at once.
Kara became the bridge between them.
She asked Clare questions about everything.
What music she liked.
What food she hated.
Why she wore old sneakers.
Why she hadn't married.
One morning, Kara asked:
"Are you going to leave?"
Clare looked at Nicholas.
"I don't know."
Kara frowned.
"Everybody leaves."
Clare crouched.
"I'm not leaving you."
Nicholas looked away.
He couldn't hide what those words meant to him.
Later that day, Agent Reyes arrived.
"We found William."
"Where?"
"Outside Chicago."
"Alone?"
"No."
"Adrian?"
"No."
"Who?"
Reyes placed a photograph on the table.
Clare stared.
Nora Chen.
Her stomach dropped.
"Nora?"
"She disappeared last night."
Nicholas immediately stood.
"She wouldn't betray us."
Reyes looked at him.
"Maybe."
Clare shook her head.
"No."
Everyone looked at her.
"Nora protected my mother."
"That doesn't mean she isn't connected."
Clare remembered the woman in the photo.
The woman who had pulled the gun on Gray.
The woman who had told her to trust nobody.
Then she saw the detail.
A ring.
"That's not Nora."
"What?"
"The hands."
Reyes looked closer.
"Different ring."
Clare nodded.
"Nora never wore jewelry."
The photograph had been altered.
They had a decoy.
The real Nora was being held somewhere.
The trail led to an abandoned theater.
Inside, they found Nora tied to a chair.
And behind her stood Adrian.
He smiled.
"I knew you'd come."
Nicholas raised his gun.
"You killed enough people."
Adrian laughed.
"Did I?"
He looked at Clare.
"Ask your father what happened the night your mother died."
Clare turned.
Nicholas went pale.
Adrian pressed a button.
A recording played.
Anna's voice.
Then Marco's.
Then Nicholas's.
A gunshot.
Clare's world went silent.
Nicholas whispered.
"I wasn't there."
The recording proved he had been.
He had confronted Marco the night Anna disappeared.
He had threatened him.
Then the explosion happened.
Nicholas believed Anna escaped.
But the recording showed something else.
Nicholas had carried Clare's infant body out of the building.
She had nearly died.
He had handed her to Anna.
Then vanished.
Clare looked at him.
"Why didn't you remember?"
"The explosion injured my head."
Adrian smiled.
"You blamed yourself for years."
Nicholas closed his eyes.
"I thought she'd died."
Clare looked at her father.
"She lived."
"Yes."
"And you saved me."
"Yes."
Adrian's expression hardened.
"Your mother still chose to hide you from him."
Clare looked at Adrian.
"Because she knew what you were."
His face changed.
That was enough.
Federal agents moved in.
Adrian ran.
Nicholas chased him.
They fought backstage.
Adrian pulled a knife.
Nicholas blocked it.
Clare screamed.
The blade cut Nicholas's shoulder.
Adrian raised it again.
Clare grabbed a heavy stage prop and struck his arm.
Nicholas took the opportunity.
Adrian fell.
Police arrested him.
William was arrested the next day.
The war was over.
But Clare's story wasn't.
Because the ledger revealed one more fact.
The companies William controlled had been transferred legally years earlier.
May you like
To Clare.
She was the rightful heir.
