Chapter 2 - THE FATHER WHO NEVER DIED
Table of Contents 6
I was released before noon.
Detective Santos made it clear that the investigation was still active, but the evidence against me had begun collapsing faster than Karen’s story could support it. The toxicology report, the missing security footage, and the photographs were enough to convince prosecutors that keeping me in jail made no sense.
I didn’t care about any of that.
I cared about Lucy.
Adrian offered me a car.
I refused.
He offered security.
I refused that too.
Then he said something that stopped me.
“If Thomas Reed has been watching your sister, going there alone may be exactly what someone expects you to do.”
I hated that he was right.
Twenty minutes later, I sat in the back of Adrian’s SUV while Chicago passed outside the tinted windows.
Neither of us spoke until we reached the hospital.
Before I opened the door, Adrian stopped me.
“There’s something you need to know.”
I looked at him.
“My people found records connected to your father.”
“My father is supposed to be dead.”
“He made sure everyone believed that.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know yet.”
That answer frightened me more than any explanation could have.
Lucy was asleep when I entered her room.
She looked impossibly small beneath the hospital blanket. Machines monitored a heart that had been failing her since childhood, and the sight reminded me exactly why I had accepted every exhausting shift available.
Five years of savings.
Five years of telling Lucy we would find a way.
Now almost all of it might disappear because I had spent three days behind bars.
I touched her hair.
Her eyes opened.
“You’re out.”
I forced a smile.
“I’m out.”
She started crying.
I leaned down and held her carefully.
Then someone knocked.
Detective Santos entered first.
Behind her stood my father.
For eleven years, I had imagined what I would say if death somehow returned someone I loved.
I thought I would run toward him.
Instead, I stepped between him and Lucy.
“You stay away from her.”
His face broke.
“Anna.”
“Don’t call me that.”
Lucy stared between us.
“Who is he?”
Dad looked at her as if the question physically hurt.
“I’m your father.”
Lucy went completely still.
Then she laughed once, a small broken sound.
“Our father is dead.”
“I know what you were told.”
“What we were told?”
Her heart monitor began climbing.
I immediately turned toward her.
“Lucy, breathe.”
Dad stepped backward.
“I’ll explain everything.”
“You’d better,” I said.
Santos moved him into a private consultation room down the hall.
His story began twenty-two years earlier.
Before marrying my mother, Thomas Reed had worked as an accountant for several Chicago construction companies. One of those companies secretly moved money for organized-crime families.
Including the Valentes.
Dad discovered millions being diverted through shell corporations. He copied the records because he feared he would eventually be blamed.
Then one of the men involved learned what he had done.
“Who?” I asked.
Dad looked toward Adrian.
Adrian’s expression hardened.
“My uncle,” he said.
Vincenzo Valente.
Adrian explained that Vincenzo had supposedly died seven years ago after disappearing during an internal family conflict.
Dad shook his head.
“He didn’t die.”
Silence filled the room.
“He arranged my accident,” Dad continued. “I survived. Federal investigators offered me protection if I testified. Your mother refused to disappear with me because Lucy was too sick to move safely.”
“So you abandoned us.”
Tears filled his eyes.
“I thought staying dead kept you alive.”
“For eleven years?”
“Vincenzo kept looking.”
“And now?”
Dad glanced toward the hallway.
“Now he found you.”
My stomach dropped.
“Karen.”
He nodded.
“She works for him.”
I stood so quickly my chair scraped backward.
“You met her.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“She contacted me three months ago. She said she knew who my daughters were.”
“Why didn’t you call us?”
“Because she threatened Lucy.”
I could barely breathe.
“What did she want?”
Dad looked at Adrian.
“She wanted access to the Valente estate.”
Adrian’s face became terrifyingly still.
Dad continued.
“She needed Anna working there because Anna was the perfect person to blame if something happened to Emma.”
I stared at him.
The dumpster.
The drugs.
The disabled cameras.
My sister’s name on the prescription.
It had never been random.
Someone had built the entire crime around me.
“But why Emma?” I whispered.
Adrian answered.
“To destroy me.”
His phone rang.
Dante’s name appeared.
Adrian answered immediately.
Then his face changed.
“What do you mean she’s gone?”
Everyone froze.
Adrian slowly lowered the phone.
“Karen disappeared.”
Santos swore under her breath.
But Adrian wasn’t finished.
“She left something behind.”
“What?”
He looked at me.
“A message.”
My pulse accelerated.
“What does it say?”
Adrian’s eyes moved toward Lucy’s hospital room.
“Bring Anna Reed to the old Lakeshore warehouse tonight.”
He paused.
“Or her sister won’t live long enough to need that heart surgery.”
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