Chapter 4
I went to River House Number Four before dawn.
The building still belonged to us.
We never used it.
I had ordered the doors sealed after Lucien’s death.
Not anymore.
Rafe opened them.
Dust.
Rusted shelving.
Black damage still visible along the rear wall.
No ghosts.
Just consequences.
An older bodyguard named Warren Hale came with me.
He had served my father that night.
Retired now.
He stood at the entrance and looked sick.
“You knew?”
“Pieces.”
Always pieces.
“Start.”
Sabine delivered a sealed envelope to Victor Merrick the afternoon before the fire.
My handwriting copied.
My wax seal copied.
Lucien arrived at eleven twenty.
Owen drove.
Two Merrick men waited.
They were supposed to frighten Lucien into leaving Chicago for several weeks.
That was what Warren had been told.
Then one of the men brought fuel.
Not part of the plan Warren knew.
Argument.
Fire.
Chaos.
Owen got Lucien through a side window.
Then went back inside.
Why?
Lucien’s coat.
His documents.
Maybe a third man.
Nobody knew.
The roof section collapsed.
One body was recovered.
Wearing Lucien’s coat.
Watch.
Ring.
I closed my eyes.
“Why would Owen have Lucien’s ring?”
Warren shook his head.
Then Rafe found something inside an old wall crack.
Metal.
Half melted.
A belt buckle.
Initials.
O.P.
Owen Pike.
There.
The answer I did not want.
The man I buried beneath my brother’s name had probably been the man who saved him.
I sat on an overturned crate.
For ten years Owen had no grave.
His sister had died believing he abandoned the family.
Lucien had no grave because he had no death.
And I had visited the wrong headstone every anniversary like grief itself proved certainty.
Warren spoke quietly.
“Lucien disappeared before we found the body.”
“Why?”
“He found the note.”
The forged invitation.
My name.
My seal.
From his perspective, his brother summoned him to an empty warehouse and men tried to kill him.
Of course he ran.
Then Sabine found him a year later.
Not to bring him home.
To preserve the lie.
I stood.
“Where exactly did she find him?”
Warren did not know.
Faye did.
St. Alden was only Lucien’s latest place.
The first was farther west.
May you like
A town called Briar Glen.
And Sabine had been sending money there for nine years.
