Chapter 6 - The Father Who Never Stopped Watching
Marcus Bennett had spent seventeen years becoming a ghost.
He had lived under five names.
Changed jobs constantly.
Never stayed in one place for more than eleven months.
He had sent birthday cards to Lily every year without a return address.
Claire had kept them hidden.
Lily found them inside an old shoebox.
Twenty-six cards.
Twenty-six years of words from a man she had believed dead.
She read every one.
The first said:
I saw a little girl today with your smile.
The second:
I hope you like school.
The fifth:
I wish I could watch you grow.
The tenth:
You don't know me, but I know you.
The twentieth:
Someday I'll tell you why.
The twenty-sixth had arrived six months earlier.
Lily.
If you are reading this before I can come home, I'm sorry.
I never stopped loving you.
The truth is worse than what you were told.
I found people inside the company who were willing to murder for money.
I believed I could expose them.
Then they found out about you.
So I disappeared.
Not because I didn't want you.
Because I wanted you alive.
The last line was underlined.
Never trust Adrian Cross.
Lily cried until she couldn't breathe.
Tristan sat beside her without speaking.
Finally she looked at him.
"Do you understand now?"
"Yes."
"I spent my whole life believing my father abandoned me."
"He didn't."
"How do you know?"
"Because I saw his records."
Lily looked down.
"He watched me."
"From a distance."
"That's not enough."
"No."
Tristan paused.
"But maybe he did what he believed was the only thing he could do."
Lily looked at him.
"You've spent your life doing that too."
His eyes shifted.
"What?"
"Protecting people by keeping them out."
He smiled without humor.
"You notice too much."
The trip to Montreal was arranged within hours.
Marcus was living under an alias.
When Lily finally saw him, she almost turned around.
He had gray hair.
A scar above his eyebrow.
Thinner than she remembered from photographs.
He looked at her and stopped breathing.
"Lily."
She stood in the doorway.
He didn't approach.
Maybe he was afraid she would refuse him.
She didn't.
She crossed the room and hit his chest with both fists.
"You were supposed to come home."
"I know."
"You let me think you were dead."
"I know."
"You missed everything."
"I know."
She hit him again.
Then she collapsed against him.
He caught her.
For twenty-six years, he had imagined this moment.
In none of those dreams had she cried for him.
He held her carefully.
"I am sorry."
Lily cried into his shoulder.
Then she pulled back.
"Tell me everything."
Marcus did.
He told Tristan about Bellweather.
About Victor Cain.
About Adrian.
About politicians who had taken money.
About judges who had buried cases.
About a hidden financial network that had survived multiple generations.
And about one final truth.
"Adrian is not the head."
Tristan frowned.
"Who is?"
Marcus looked at him.
"Your uncle."
Tristan froze.
"My uncle is dead."
"I know what the records say."
"What are you saying?"
"He's alive."
Lily felt the room turn cold.
Tristan's uncle, Vincent Cain, had supposedly died in a boating accident fifteen years earlier.
Marcus handed Tristan a photograph.
Vincent Cain was alive.
Older.
Bearded.
Standing beside Adrian Cross.
The date on the photograph was three months earlier.
Tristan stared.
"How?"
"Because your family didn't bury him."
"They buried somebody else."
Marcus nodded.
"Vincent disappeared so he could rebuild the organization through shell companies."
"And Adrian?"
"His son."
Silence.
Lily looked between them.
"Then why target me?"
Marcus answered.
"Because you inherited something Vincent has been trying to find for twenty years."
"What?"
"Your grandmother's trust."
Lily blinked.
"My grandmother died before I was born."
"Yes."
Marcus smiled sadly.
"She left everything to her granddaughter."
"Me?"
"Yes."
"What?"
"Shares. Property. Accounts."
"How much?"
Marcus hesitated.
"Enough to control Bellweather."
Tristan's face hardened.
"So this was never about Lily."
Marcus shook his head.
"It was always about Lily."
Lily looked at Tristan.
"And now they know where I am."
May you like
Tristan stood.
"Then we stop running."
