Chapter 3 - The House Her Father Never Wanted Her to Search
Lucien entered the cottage first.
Evelyn hated that she allowed it.
She hated even more that she was relieved.
Nico checked the ground floor while another Moretti security man circled the property.
Nothing moved inside.
No voices.
No footsteps.
Only wind pressing branches against the old windows.
Evelyn stood in the foyer of a house that had once smelled like cinnamon toast and her grandmother’s lavender perfume.
Now it smelled like dust and damp wood.
The drawers had been opened.
Books had been thrown from shelves.
A painting hung crooked.
Someone had searched quickly.
And violently.
“They were here,” Evelyn whispered.
Lucien looked at the stairs.
“They may still be.”
Nico returned.
“Ground floor clear.”
They moved upward.
Evelyn’s childhood room was at the end of the hall.
The door stood open.
For one terrible second she expected the window seat to have been destroyed.
It had not.
Whoever searched the room had emptied drawers and pulled clothes from an old wardrobe, but the white wooden bench beneath the window remained untouched.
Evelyn crossed the room.
She knelt.
Her fingers found the tiny imperfection beneath the molding.
Press.
Slide.
Lift.
A narrow wooden panel opened.
Inside were three things.
A small wrapped jewelry box.
A photograph.
And a black ledger.
Lucien went completely still.
“What is it?” Evelyn asked.
He took the ledger carefully.
“Old accounting records.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning your father was smarter than everyone looking for him.”
She opened the jewelry box.
Inside lay her mother’s sapphire necklace.
Evelyn stared.
She had thought it lost after her mother died.
A note was tucked beneath it.
FOR EVIE. YOUR MOTHER WANTED YOU TO HAVE THIS WHEN YOU WERE READY TO BUILD A LIFE OF YOUR OWN.
She pressed the note to her mouth.
For a moment the danger vanished.
She was seventeen again.
Her father alive downstairs.
Her mother’s perfume on a scarf.
A whole family waiting inside an ordinary future.
Lucien turned away slightly.
Giving her privacy without leaving her alone.
Evelyn noticed.
The photograph showed Daniel Vale standing beside another man.
Lucien’s father.
Lorenzo Moretti.
They were smiling.
On the back Daniel had written:
Two fathers trying to leave our children something cleaner than what we inherited.
Evelyn handed it to Lucien.
His face changed.
The ruthless calm disappeared.
For one second he looked like a son who had never finished grieving.
“I’ve never seen this.”
“You look like him.”
“People tell me I look like my grandfather.”
“They’re wrong.”
Lucien stared at the picture.
“My father trusted yours.”
“And mine trusted him.”
Nico opened the ledger.
“Boss.”
Lucien looked.
Several pages contained handwritten codes.
Company names.
Dates.
Numbers.
Initials.
One set appeared repeatedly.
W.C.
V.M.
L.M.
Evelyn’s stomach tightened.
“Lucien Moretti.”
“No.”
Lucien’s answer was immediate.
She looked at him.
“Those are your initials.”
“My father’s.”
“Lorenzo Moretti.”
“Yes.”
Nico pointed.
“Different handwriting next to Lorenzo’s entries.”
Lucien took the ledger.
“My father was documenting transfers.”
“Can you prove that?”
“Not from this alone.”
A floorboard creaked downstairs.
Everyone froze.
Nico signaled.
Lucien moved Evelyn behind him.
Then a voice called from below.
“Evelyn?”
Adrian.
She closed her eyes.
“Of course.”
Lucien’s expression turned cold.
Adrian appeared at the top of the stairs with his hands visible.
“I’m alone.”
Nico searched him anyway.
Adrian barely objected.
His gaze landed on the photograph in Evelyn’s hand.
“You found it.”
She stared.
“You knew?”
“I knew your father kept something here. I didn’t know what.”
“How did you find us?”
“I put a tracker on your car last year.”
Silence.
Evelyn stared at him.
“You what?”
“I know how that sounds.”
“It sounds like you put a tracker on my car.”
“It was after my father started asking questions about you.”
“And you left it there for seven months?”
“I forgot about it.”
Lucien looked at Nico.
“Remove it.”
Adrian stepped forward.
“I came to warn her.”
“Your warnings are becoming repetitive,” Lucien said.
Adrian ignored him.
“My father is meeting Vittorio tomorrow.”
“Where?” Evelyn asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Convenient.”
“I’m trying to help.”
“Seven months late.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
“I deserve that.”
“Yes.”
“But there are things you still don’t understand.”
Evelyn held up the ledger.
“Then help me understand.”
Adrian looked at it.
Fear crossed his face.
“My father cannot know you have that.”
“Why?”
“Because he thinks it can destroy him.”
“And can it?”
“Yes.”
The answer filled the room.
Adrian sat on the edge of the old desk.
“My father and Vittorio built a network through development projects. Construction contracts were inflated. Money moved through shell companies. Some came from gambling. Some came from stolen cargo.”
“And some?” Lucien asked.
Adrian looked at him.
“Your uncle knows.”
Lucien’s expression hardened.
“What else?”
“I don’t.”
“Lie.”
“I don’t.”
Lucien stepped closer.
Adrian stood.
Evelyn moved between them.
“No.”
Both men stopped.
“This is exactly what I’m finished with. Men deciding intimidation is faster than conversation.”
Lucien’s jaw tightened, but he stepped back.
Adrian looked at her with an expression painfully close to the one he had worn when asking her to marry him.
“I was going to tell you everything.”
“When?”
“After I got proof.”
“You had six months before leaving me.”
“My father threatened you.”
“And you believed him.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Adrian looked toward Lucien.
“Because I had already seen what happened to someone who tried to expose them.”
Evelyn’s breath caught.
“Who?”
Adrian hesitated.
“My uncle.”
She remembered Henry Cross.
Warren’s younger brother.
A quiet man who disappeared from family events when she and Adrian had been dating.
She had been told he moved overseas.
“He isn’t in London?”
“No.”
“Where is he?”
Adrian looked down.
“No one knows.”
The room became colder.
Evelyn wrapped her arms around herself.
Lucien opened the ledger again.
“Your father and Vittorio believe this is enough to expose them.”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t they destroy it nine years ago?”
“They couldn’t find it.”
“Why now?”
Adrian looked at Evelyn.
“Because you were going to marry me.”
Understanding arrived slowly.
“My engagement brought me close to the Cross family.”
“Yes.”
“And your father thought I might eventually go through Dad’s things.”
“Yes.”
“So he wanted me close.”
“At first.”
Evelyn felt sick.
“And when you refused to search my property for him?”
“He told me to leave you.”
A bitter laugh escaped her.
“So the engagement that I thought ended because you stopped loving me actually ended because your father lost patience with me.”
Adrian’s face twisted.
“That isn’t what happened.”
“It is exactly what happened.”
“I loved you.”
“You keep saying that like it fixes what you did.”
“I was protecting you.”
“No.”
Her voice sharpened.
“You were protecting yourself from having to trust me.”
Adrian looked wounded.
Good, some small part of her thought.
Then she hated herself for thinking it.
Lucien moved toward the window.
“We need to leave.”
Evelyn looked at him.
“Why?”
“Because if Adrian tracked your car, someone else can.”
Nico was already checking outside.
A second later he swore.
“Two vehicles coming up the road.”
Lights appeared between the trees.
Lucien closed the ledger.
“Back exit.”
Evelyn grabbed the necklace and photograph.
Adrian blocked the doorway.
“They’ll see you.”
“Move,” Lucien said.
“There’s an old path through the woods.”
Evelyn looked at Adrian.
“How do you know?”
“I came here with you three summers ago.”
She had forgotten.
He had not.
For one impossible moment memory crashed into danger.
Adrian cooking terrible pancakes.
Her laughing.
The two of them talking about children on the porch.
That life had once felt certain.
Now armed men might be driving toward the same porch.
The first car stopped outside.
Doors opened.
Voices.
Nico turned off the lights.
“Move.”
They went through the rear of the house.
Evelyn wore thin evening boots completely wrong for wet forest ground.
Lucien stayed beside her.
Adrian followed.
Behind them someone shouted.
A flashlight beam cut across the trees.
They ran.
Evelyn slipped.
Lucien caught her.
His arm wrapped around her waist for less than a second.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
“Keep moving.”
Gunfire cracked behind them.
Adrian ducked.
Nico fired once toward the trees.
“Warning shot,” he said.
Lucien looked furious.
“I know what it was.”
They reached an abandoned barn near the property line.
Nico forced the door.
Inside, darkness smelled of old hay and rust.
They waited.
Footsteps passed outside.
Evelyn stood pressed against a wooden wall.
Lucien was inches away.
Adrian stood on the other side of the barn.
For perhaps ten minutes no one spoke.
Then Adrian whispered, “You should give me the ledger.”
Evelyn almost laughed.
“What?”
“My father won’t hurt me.”
Lucien’s voice was cold.
“He already has.”
Adrian ignored him.
“If I bring it back, I can say I found it first.”
“And then what?” Evelyn asked. “We pretend none of this happened?”
“I can end it.”
“You couldn’t end it seven months ago.”
Adrian flinched.
Lucien watched Evelyn.
Not Adrian.
Her.
She suddenly understood the difference.
Adrian loved her, perhaps.
But Adrian’s love had always contained the assumption that he knew what was best.
Lucien, terrifying reputation and all, had disagreed with almost every choice she made that night.
Yet he had followed them.
That frightened her in a completely different way.
Because trust from Lucien Moretti felt more dangerous than control from Adrian Cross.
She looked down at the ledger.
“We don’t give it to anyone.”
Lucien nodded.
“We copy everything.”
“And then?”
“Then we learn what it proves.”
“And if it proves your uncle is guilty?”
“My uncle answers for it.”
Adrian laughed quietly.
“You think your family will let you hand Vittorio to federal prosecutors?”
Lucien looked at him.
“My family answers to me.”
“No. Your companies do.”
Lucien’s face changed.
Adrian continued.
“You know what Vittorio has been telling the old crews? That you’re destroying everything your grandfather built. That you’ve become weak. Corporate. Respectable.”
“Respectable isn’t an insult.”
“To them it is.”
Evelyn studied Lucien.
“Is that true?”
“Yes.”
“And if you turn your uncle in?”
“Some of them will choose him.”
“And then?”
“A war.”
The word landed quietly.
Evelyn stared at the ledger in her hands.
She had kissed a stranger because she did not want her ex to see her lonely.
Twenty-four hours later, she was standing in a barn holding records that could start a war inside one of New York’s most feared families.
Her life had officially become unreasonable.
A phone vibrated.
Adrian checked his.
A message.
He went pale.
“What?”
He showed Evelyn.
A photograph of his father, Warren Cross, sitting at a table with Vittorio Moretti.
Between them sat a woman.
Megan.
Evelyn’s assistant.
Her friend.
Her only employee who knew every detail of the gala.
Megan’s hands were tied.
The message beneath the image contained one sentence.
BRING THE LEDGER OR THE GIRL DIES.
Evelyn’s knees weakened.
“No.”
Lucien took the phone.
His expression became terrifyingly calm.
Adrian whispered, “They knew Megan mattered to you.”
Evelyn looked at Lucien.
“This is because of me.”
“No.”
“They took her because of me.”
“They took her because they are afraid.”
“What do we do?”
Lucien looked at the photograph.
Then at the ledger.
Then at Evelyn.
“We give them exactly what they asked for.”
Adrian stared.
“You can’t.”
Lucien’s eyes went cold.
“I didn’t say we give them the real one.”
For the first time since the nightmare began, Evelyn understood why people feared Lucien Moretti.
May you like
It was not because he became angry.
It was because when everyone else was frightened, Lucien became precise.
Related Stories
