Chapter 10 - THE NIGHT THE ESTATE WENT DARK
Backup generators should have activated in four seconds.
They did not.
Someone had disabled them.
My entire estate went black.
Allie screamed one name.
“Lily!”
We ran.
Upstairs.
Guest room empty.
Window closed.
No broken lock.
Gray blanket on the floor.
I stopped breathing.
Then I heard giggling.
Closet.
I opened it.
Lily sat inside with Fantasma.
“Hide-and-seek.”
Allie dropped to her knees and grabbed her.
I had never been so relieved to be angry.
“Why are you in the closet?”
“Kitty went in.”
Of course.
The cat had saved her again.
Gunfire sounded outside.
Agents returned fire.
I moved Allie and Lily into the reinforced safe room.
Evan joined them.
I hesitated at the door.
Lily grabbed my hand.
“You coming?”
“I have to help.”
She frowned.
“You always work.”
Allie looked at me.
Something passed between us.
Then I crouched.
“I’ll come back.”
Lily stared seriously.
“Promise?”
I remembered all the men in these stories—no, just this story. Better.
“I promise I’ll try.”
She accepted that.
The attack lasted twelve minutes.
Three men captured.
One wounded.
None knew Vale directly.
Orders came through intermediaries.
But one attacker carried a monastery access card.
Claire obtained a federal warrant by dawn.
Father Anthony Vale was arrested at 6:22 a.m.
No shootout.
No final speech.
He was found eating oatmeal.
I almost respected the anticlimax.
Then agents searched his archive.
Forty years of records.
Recorded confessions.
Bank transactions.
Photographs.
Blackmail files.
One room contained shelves labeled by family name.
MORETTI.
CARTER.
FALCONE.
DUCA.
Half the Midwest’s criminal world had apparently been managed by one quiet man with filing cabinets.
Inside my father’s file was the truth.
He and Gabriel Carter had planned to dismantle the criminal network.
Not the family businesses.
The criminal side.
They wanted us out before the next generation inherited it.
Vale killed them—or believed he had.
My father died.
Gabriel survived.
Then Elena tried to finish their work.
She died.
I sat alone after reading it.
Allie found me.
No blanket this time.
She simply sat across from me.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Good answer.”
I looked at her.
“You stole that from Elias Mercer?” No, wrong story. Avoid.
“I learned it from you.”
She smiled faintly.
Then handed me a letter recovered from Vale’s archive.
Elena’s handwriting.
Murphy,
If you ever find this, I need you to know something before you destroy yourself blaming everyone else.
I stopped.
Allie waited.
I continued.
The night Elena died, she was not alone.
She had been driving with someone.
A child.
I stared at the page.
My sister had secretly given birth four years earlier.
The baby had been hidden for safety.
Elena’s daughter was alive.
May you like
And Vale’s notes identified the guardian.
Allie Carter.
