Chapter 7 - The Letter from the Dead Patriarch
The heavy study doors were bolted once again, but the room felt completely different now.
The scent of woodsmoke from the fireplace had been overtaken by the sharp, metallic tang of gunpowder and burnt paper that clung to Lucas and Emma.
Arthur Blake sat at the walnut desk, using a pair of archival tweezers to carefully separate the soot-stained pages of the ledger Emma had pulled from the fire.
Eleanor DeLuca sat upright in her wheelchair, her hands clasped tightly over her gold rosary beads, watching Emma with eyes filled with profound, maternal sorrow.
Emma sat at the edge of the large mahogany desk, her hands wrapped around a warm mug of black tea that Lucas had forced her to hold to stop her violent shivering.
On the green blotter before her lay the red wax envelope that Lucas had retrieved from Anthony’s hidden wall safe behind the portrait of Saint Michael.
The red wax seal had been broken, but the contents remained untouched.
"Read it, child," Eleanor whispered gently across the desk.
"Anthony wrote those words during the final weeks of his life, when his heart was failing and he knew he would soon stand before his Creator to answer for his sins."
"He wrote it for the day you found your way back to this house."
Emma’s fingers trembled as she slid the thick, cream-colored parchment from the envelope.
The paper was crisp, bearing the watermark of the DeLuca family crest, and covered in the bold, deliberate black fountain pen strokes of a dying patriarch.
She began to read aloud, her voice wavering in the quiet room:
"To Emily Hayes, my goddaughter, if God in His mercy allows these words to reach your hands."
"If you are reading this letter, it means I have failed in my earthly duty to bring you home before death took me."
"It means you have grown up in a world of strangers, carrying an empty past, while the man who swore to protect your family lived in luxury behind stone walls."
Emma paused, swallowing a painful lump in her throat before continuing.
"Twenty-seven years ago, on the night of November 14th, I made the greatest and most unforgivable error of my life."
"I believed in honor among men of power."
"When Richard Vale and his task force arrived at the yellow cottage by the Old Mill Canal, they came under the authority of the state."
"Vale showed me a sealed judicial document that claimed federal agents were executing a witness preservation transport for Rebecca and her family."
"He told me that my presence at the cottage was endangering your lives."
"He told me that if I stood in the way of the law, the federal government would seize the docks and declare my entire family an active terrorist syndicate."
"I was arrogant enough to believe that a police captain would not dare to betray Anthony DeLuca."
"I ordered my three guards outside the cottage to step aside and lower their weapons."
"I unlocked the front gate with my own hands."
A soft sob escaped Eleanor’s throat as the old woman pressed her handkerchief to her face.
Emma felt a tear roll down her cheek, landing squarely on the aged ink of the letter.
"I waited on the road for thirty minutes, expecting Rebecca to emerge with her daughter in federal protection custody."
"Instead, I saw two unmarked black vans speed away into the darkness toward the state turnpike."
"When I ran inside that cottage, my world ended."
"The living room was destroyed."
"The telephone lines were severed."
"Rebecca was gone."
"And on the floor of the yellow bedroom, beside the cedar wardrobe, lay your small white stuffed rabbit, soaked in tears and dust."
"That rabbit has sat inside the drawer of my nightstand for twenty-seven years."
"I knew in that moment that Vale had not executed a legal transfer."
"He had stolen two innocent children to force Rebecca Hayes into permanent silence."
Emma looked up from the page, her eyes burning with confusion.
"Why didn't he go to the newspapers?" Emma asked, looking at Lucas.
"Why didn't your grandfather use his money and his power to expose Vale that very night?"
"Keep reading, Emily," Lucas said quietly, his hand resting gently on her shoulder.
Emma looked down at the letter again, reading the second page:
"For five years, I spent millions of dollars hunting the shadow trail of Child Witness Relocation."
"Vale had buried the paper trail inside five separate municipal departments."
"In the autumn of 2004, my private investigators finally located your mother."
Emma’s breath hitched violently in her throat.
The room seemed to spin.
"He found her?" Emma whispered, her heart pounding with a deafening roar.
"My mother... she was alive in 2004?"
"Read, child," Eleanor urged, her voice breaking.
"Rebecca was alive," Emma read, her tears blurring the ink.
"Vale had given her the identity of a woman named Clara Miller."
"He had placed her in an isolated farming community outside Cedar Rapids, Iowa."
"She was working twelve-hour shifts at a small flour mill and bakery called Prairie Hearth."
"I immediately dispatched two of my most trusted men to Cedar Rapids to bring Rebecca home to the estate."
"But when my men arrived at her small wooden rental house on Elm Street, they discovered a horror far worse than death."
"Rebecca was a hollow shell of the vibrant woman who had managed the harbor logistics."
"Every Sunday morning, she would walk two miles in the freezing rain to the cemetery of Saint Jude on the edge of town."
"She would sit for hours beside a small marble headstone that had been purchased with state witness relocation funds."
"The headstone read: 'Emily Hayes — Beloved Daughter — Taken to the Angels, November 14, 1999.'"
Emma covered her mouth with both hands, letting out a jagged, agonized scream that echoed off the mahogany bookshelves.
Lucas’s jaw clenched so hard that the veins along his neck bulged with lethal fury.
"Vale bought a gravestone," Lucas whispered, his voice shaking with pure hatred.
"He buried an empty box in an Iowa cemetery just to convince a grieving mother that her little girl was dead."
"Anthony wrote that Rebecca’s mind had fractured under the weight of that grave," Arthur Blake said softly, looking up from the charred ledger.
"She had tried to take her own life twice in that first year."
"Her doctor in Iowa had warned that any sudden shock, any revelation that her daughter had been trafficked into the foster care system, would push her completely over the brink into irreversible madness."
Emma forced herself to look back down at the final paragraph of Anthony’s letter.
"I realized that I could not simply bring Rebecca back to face the man who destroyed her family," the letter concluded.
"Not while Vale held the levers of power in this city."
"Not while Vale still controlled the police union and the district attorney's office."
"And most importantly, not until I could place Emily’s living hand back into Rebecca’s hand."
"I swore to Almighty God that I would not disturb Rebecca’s fragile peace until the day I found her true daughter."
"Attached to this letter is the key to safety deposit box 404 at the First Commercial Bank of Cedar Rapids."
"Inside that box is one million dollars in bearer bonds, the original deeds to Rebecca's home, and the original diary she kept during the harbor investigation."
"If you are reading this, Emily, go to Iowa."
"Find your mother."
"Tell her that Anthony DeLuca kept his promise, even from beyond the grave."
"And tell her that her daughter did not die on that cold November night."
Emma clutched the letter against her chest, weeping with an intensity that shook her entire frame.
Tucked behind the final page of the letter was a small, color photograph dated three years ago.
It showed a woman with graying hair and tired, sorrowful eyes sitting on a green wooden bench outside a brick bakery.
She wore a faded denim coat and an apron dusted with white flour.
And resting on her lap, clutched in her thin, flour-dusted fingers, was a small handmade stuffed rabbit made of white wool.
Emma stared at the woman’s face.
The cheekbones.
The slight arch of the eyebrows.
The sorrowful curve of the lips.
It was the face that had whispered to her in the darkness of the cedar wardrobe twenty-seven years ago.
"She is still waiting for me," Emma sobbed, looking at Lucas through her tears.
"She is sitting on that bench in Iowa right now, holding a rabbit, believing I am under the ground."
"She won't have to wait much longer, Emily," Lucas said, his eyes burning with absolute determination.
"My private jet will be fueled at the airfield by dawn."
"We are going to Iowa to bring your mother home."
Then Arthur Blake looked up from the scorched domestic ledger, his face as white as a sheet of paper.
"Lucas," Arthur said, his voice trembling with a fresh wave of terror.
"Before you board any plane, you need to look at this staff roster from 1999."
"What is it, Arthur?" Lucas asked, turning toward the archivist.
Arthur pointed to a line of text that had been partially burned, but remained completely legible under the magnifying glass.
"The second girl," Arthur whispered.
"The real Emma Hayes."
"The seven-year-old cousin who disappeared from that cottage."
"She didn't stay in an out-of-state asylum."
May you like
"She came back to this city six months ago."
"And according to this personnel transfer record, she is currently working inside your family’s commercial harbor terminal under an assumed name."
