Chapter 5 - BLOOD IN THE CHURCH
Victor ordered Elena to hand him the drive.
She held it up.
“You’ve spent seventeen years cleaning Reagan’s messes. Has she ever once protected you?”
“She pays me.”
“She’ll bury you the moment you stop being useful.”
Victor stepped closer.
June knocked over a wooden candle stand.
It crashed between them.
The shotgun fired.
The blast tore into the wall as I tackled Victor. We hit the floor hard. He drove an elbow into my ribs, but prison had taught me how to absorb pain without letting go.
Elena kicked the shotgun away.
Victor pulled a knife.
June struck his wrist with a brass cross. The knife dropped, and I pinned him against the floor.
“Call the police,” I said.
Elena didn’t move.
“The local police protected him before.”
“Then call the state police.”
Victor laughed through bloody teeth.
“You still think this is about stolen money?”
I tightened my grip.
“What is it about?”
“Your house.”
“The house?”
“Ask Camden what’s under it.”
Sirens approached twenty minutes later. June had called a state investigator from another county.
Victor was arrested for attempted murder and possession of an illegal firearm. He said nothing else.
Elena drove me to St. Matthew’s Rehabilitation Center under a false name.
My father was in Room 214.
I stopped outside the door.
For three years, I had imagined this moment. Sometimes I yelled at him. Sometimes I forgave him. Sometimes I simply fell into his arms.
Nothing prepared me for how small he looked.
Camden Dennis had once filled every room he entered. Now he lay beneath a thin blanket with gray hair, hollow cheeks and a tube beneath his nose.
His eyes opened.
“Finn?”
I couldn’t speak.
He tried to sit up.
I stepped back.
“You let me rot in prison.”
Tears filled his eyes.
“I know.”
“You believed them.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t visit me once.”
“Reagan monitored the prison. When I discovered the truth, she threatened to have you killed if I contacted you.”
“You should’ve tried.”
“I was a coward.”
His honesty hurt more than an excuse would have.
I turned toward the window.
“You owe me more than an apology.”
“I owe you everything.”
He told me Reagan’s first husband, Thomas Vale, had been a private investigator. He discovered that she and Victor were stealing from several companies.
Reagan killed him during an argument at the warehouse. Victor set the fire and placed Elena’s necklace beside the body.
My father helped Elena disappear because he feared Reagan would kill her too. But he never knew Reagan was responsible for Thomas’s death until years later.
“What’s under the house?” I asked.
His face changed.
“Your mother built a records vault beneath the old wine cellar.”
“My mother?”
“She suspected Reagan before I did. Amelia hid copies of everything she found.”
“Why didn’t you use those records to clear me?”
“Because I could never open the vault.”
He reached beneath his pillow and handed me a silver key.
“The brass key opens Unit 108. This one opens the vault.”
My phone buzzed.
It was a photograph from Carter.
June was tied to a chair inside my childhood home.
May you like
The message read:
BRING BOTH KEYS OR SHE DIES.
