Chapter 7 - The Man Beside Her Father
Clara carried the broken badge into Raphael’s library.
She didn’t knock.
“Your fiancée was in my room.”
Raphael stood.
“Tell me exactly what happened.”
She did.
No apologizing.
No softening the words.
When she finished, he called Milo.
“Check the hallway cameras. Preserve everything.”
Evelyn arrived ten minutes later, offended before anyone accused her.
“Your staff thinks I need permission to walk through my future home?”
“Did you enter Clara’s rooms?” Raphael asked.
“I was checking the flowers.”
“There are no flowers in there,” Clara said.
Evelyn turned.
“You should remember who you’re speaking to.”
“I remember exactly.”
Raphael held out his hand.
“The box.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Then we wait for the video.”
Evelyn’s eyes shifted toward the door.
There it was.
The smallest surrender.
“It looked like stolen property. I gave it to Victor.”
Raphael’s face emptied.
“Why?”
“Because you’re clearly too involved to think straight.”
“Leave.”
“Raphael—”
“The room. Now.”
After she left, Clara’s breath shook.
Raphael didn’t try to touch her.
“What was in the box?”
She described the receipts.
Her father’s notes.
An old photograph she had barely looked at since the hospital.
“Who was in the photograph?”
“My dad. Brennan. Another man. At a company dinner.”
“Would you recognize him?”
“I saw him once afterward.”
“Where?”
Clara stared at the broken badge in her palm.
“Outside the dispatch office. The night my father died.”
Raphael took a framed photograph from a shelf.
His father stood on a dock beside Victor.
Both younger.
Both smiling.
Clara’s hand began to tremble.
“The one on the right.”
“My uncle?”
She nodded.
Raphael sat down slowly.
For fifteen years, Victor had been the man who stayed after his father’s funeral.
The man who handled the difficult calls.
The man who told a nineteen-year-old boy which enemies to blame.
Milo entered carrying a tablet.
“Victor left through the service entrance twenty minutes ago.”
“The box?”
“In his hand.”
Raphael called his uncle.
Victor answered warmly.
“Everything all right?”
“Bring it back.”
A pause.
“What?”
“Clara’s box.”
The warmth vanished.
Then Victor said, “You’re making the same mistake your father made.”
Raphael’s fingers tightened around the phone.
May you like
“What mistake?”
“Trusting the wrong people.”
