Chapter 7 - THE BROTHER WHO DID NOT DIEThe basement went silent.
Marcus Bell stood on the other side of the door with six armed men. His voice remained calm, almost paternal.
“You’ve been lied to your entire life,” he said. “I am the only person who ever protected you.”
Gabriel looked at Thomas. “Did you hear that?”
“He said the same thing when he burned the warehouse.”
Thomas opened a hidden cabinet and removed a ring of keys. “There’s a tunnel beneath the church. It exits near the old courthouse.”
Norah grabbed one of the files. “We can’t leave everything.”
“Take the evidence that proves who Michael became,” Thomas said.
“You found him?”
Thomas’s eyes filled with regret. “I found a trail.”
Gabriel seized a folder stamped with a medical symbol. A second file contained photographs of a boy growing into a thin, dark-haired young man.
The last photograph showed him at twenty-six.
He looked exactly like Gabriel.
Except for the scar beneath his left eye.
“Michael is alive,” Gabriel whispered.
“He was,” Thomas said. “He disappeared three years ago.”
The basement door splintered. They entered the tunnel as bullets struck the shelves behind them. Thomas led them through darkness while Gabriel covered the rear. Norah held the evidence against her chest and listened to men shouting above.
They emerged in a drainage chamber beside the courthouse. Thomas had hidden a second vehicle there.
“Where does Michael live?” Gabriel asked.
“He doesn’t.”
“What does that mean?”
“He vanished three years ago.”
Norah opened the medical file. Inside was a patient record from a private psychiatric clinic. The patient had been admitted under a false name: Mason Hale.
The final page was a transfer authorization signed by Marcus Bell.
Gabriel’s face became frighteningly still.
“Marcus put him in a clinic.”
“He said Michael was unstable,” Thomas replied. “He said the boy believed he was the rightful heir.”
“Was he?”
“Legally, yes. Morally, neither of you should have inherited that empire.”
The sentence landed harder than any accusation.
Gabriel turned away.
Norah followed him into the vehicle. “You don’t have to become your father because you have his money.”
“You don’t know what I have.”
“I know you carried an injured man out of a burning diner. I know you checked whether I was bleeding before checking yourself. I know you ate my stew even though you believed it might kill you.”
“That last one was not noble.”
“It was brave.”
He looked at her.
For a moment, the city disappeared. There was only rain on the windshield and the quiet shock of being seen as something other than a weapon.
Then Thomas entered with a new piece of information.
“Marcus is holding the clinic records at the Hayes Foundation.”
Gabriel laughed bitterly. “The charity building.”
“He uses it as a private archive.”
Norah studied the photograph of Michael. “Why would he keep him alive?”
“Leverage,” Gabriel said. “If I learned about Michael, I might challenge the succession. If the council believed there was another heir, Marcus could control both of us.”
Thomas looked at him. “Or kill one and blame the other.”
Gabriel started the engine.
“We’re going to the foundation.”
Norah turned toward him. “You need a plan.”
“I have one.”
“Is it ‘walk in and shoot everyone’?”
“That was my old plan.”
“And the new one?”
Gabriel met her eyes.
“We steal the truth.”
The foundation rose over the city in glass and white stone. Gabriel’s name was carved into the entrance, beneath the words FOR A BETTER TOMORROW.
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At midnight, every light in the building went dark.
Somewhere inside, a man who looked exactly like Gabriel Hayes opened his eyes.
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