Chapter 5 - THE MAN AFTER VICTOR
Margaret kept the bells.
All of them.
That decision saved her from another lie.
They were hidden inside a cedar box beneath the floor of an old prayer room in her house.
Lorenzo went there before dawn.
Sarah came with him.
Noah stayed at the DeLuca estate with two women Sarah trusted and enough armed men to defend a small country.
Adrian was not invited.
He followed anyway.
When Lorenzo saw his car behind them, he almost ordered it turned around.
Sarah stopped him.
“He deserves answers about his father.”
Lorenzo looked at her.
“Does he?”
“Yes.”
“After tonight?”
“After tonight, I owe him nothing.”
Her voice hardened.
“But truth is not something you give only to people you like.”
Lorenzo said nothing.
Sarah was no longer the twenty-two-year-old woman he had left.
Three years had changed her too.
Margaret’s prayer room smelled of old wood and incense.
She lifted a plank.
The cedar box rested underneath.
Seven black bells lay inside.
Each no larger than a child’s fist.
Lorenzo picked up the first.
Heavy.
No inscription.
The second.
Third.
Then the fifth.
Margaret said quietly:
“That was the first after Victor died.”
Adrian looked at it.
His father had died after a sudden collapse during dinner.
No one suspected murder.
No one needed to.
Victor Vale had spent his life creating reasons for death to find him.
Lorenzo turned the bell over.
A thin scratch crossed the bottom.
Not random.
A symbol.
A wolf.
Adrian frowned.
“My father’s mark.”
Margaret nodded.
“Every bell had it.”
Adrian took the sixth.
Wolf.
Seventh.
Wolf.
“He could have taught someone.”
“Yes.”
“Or someone copied it.”
“Yes.”
Adrian looked at Lorenzo.
“My father had a brother.”
“Name.”
“Malcolm.”
Margaret went pale.
Adrian saw.
“What?”
“You told me Malcolm died when you were a child.”
“That’s what my father told me.”
Lorenzo watched Margaret.
“Aunt.”
She whispered, “Malcolm Vale was never dead.”
Adrian turned.
“You knew him?”
“Everyone knew him once.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who was he?”
Margaret looked toward Lorenzo.
“Victor was the face of the Vale family.”
A pause.
“Malcolm was the reason men feared it.”
Lorenzo remembered rumors from his youth.
A second Vale brother.
No photographs.
No public appearances.
A man called the Undertaker because once someone disappeared into his hands, even enemies stopped asking where the body went.
Lorenzo had assumed the man was myth.
He had spent three years learning myths sometimes had keys.
“Did Malcolm take me?”
Margaret did not answer.
Adrian did.
“If he did, you would know.”
Lorenzo looked at him.
“Why?”
“My father hated him.”
“Brothers often do.”
“No.”
Adrian’s voice was sharper.
“He was afraid of him.”
That mattered.
Victor Vale had been afraid of almost nobody.
Adrian knelt near the cedar box.
He lifted the last bell.
Something rattled inside.
Margaret frowned.
“It never did that before.”
Adrian examined the seam.
Lorenzo took it from him.
The bottom twisted.
A tiny compartment opened.
Inside lay a piece of metal.
A key.
Black iron.
Sarah looked at Margaret.
“You never opened them?”
“I was told not to.”
Lorenzo smiled without warmth.
“And three years later, we still obey dead men.”
He took the key.
There was a shape stamped into its head.
A church tower.
Adrian recognized it.
“Saint Lucien.”
Lorenzo looked at him.
“What?”
“My family chapel.”
The Vale chapel had been sealed for twenty years.
Victor supposedly closed it after Malcolm “died.”
Lorenzo looked at Adrian.
“You have access?”
“I have a key.”
Lorenzo held up the black one.
“So do I.”
They went before sunrise.
The chapel sat beyond the Vale family cemetery.
Dark stone.
Dead vines.
A bell tower without a bell.
Adrian unlocked the outer gate.
Lorenzo’s key opened a narrow iron door beneath the altar.
Behind it waited a staircase descending underground.
Sarah stopped.
Lorenzo looked at her.
“You don’t have to come.”
She stared at him.
“I spent three years outside the truth.”
Then stepped past him.
“I’m done waiting above it.”
The chamber beneath the chapel was not a tomb.
It was a room.
A table.
Three chairs.
An empty rack where weapons had once been stored.
A wall covered with burned circles.
And hanging from a hook—
Lorenzo’s old travel coat.
The one Margaret said had burned in the car.
Sarah touched it.
Her hand began shaking.
Lorenzo looked toward Adrian.
Adrian looked sick.
“My father used this place.”
Then a voice came from behind them.
“So did yours.”
Everyone turned.
An elderly man stood at the top of the stairs.
Silver hair.
Black cane.
A wolf-shaped pin on his lapel.
May you like
Adrian whispered:
“Uncle Malcolm.”
