Chapter 6 - The Sister He Had Just Found
Leah never reached the elevator.
Security footage showed a maintenance worker meeting her near the parking garage.
He flashed something.
Badge or identification.
Leah followed him.
The vehicle left twelve minutes earlier.
Roman’s control cracked.
Not loudly.
His face simply became empty.
Emma recognized it.
It was the expression of someone converting fear into violence.
She stepped in front of him.
“Don’t.”
“Move.”
“No.”
“Emma.”
“If you go after Thomas angry, he wins twice.”
Roman’s eyes were cold.
“He has my sister.”
“And he wants you predictable.”
Roman looked at her for a long moment.
Then exhaled.
Marco traced the vehicle to a traffic camera heading south.
Grant knew one of Thomas’s properties in that direction.
A decommissioned courthouse annex near the river.
Thomas had used it for private meetings.
They alerted the federal oversight staff attorney instead of local police.
That decision came from Vivian.
“If Thomas owns anyone, it will be people close enough to respond first.”
They went with a small federal team.
Roman hated letting others lead.
Emma saw him fighting the instinct to control everything.
At the annex, they found the vehicle.
No Leah.
Inside, however, was Thomas’s driver.
Unconscious but alive.
He had been struck from behind.
A note lay on the passenger seat.
TELL ROMAN I AM NOT A HOSTAGE.
Roman read it twice.
Emma almost smiled.
“She left voluntarily?”
“Apparently.”
Grant looked confused.
“With Thomas?”
Leah called ten minutes later.
“I’m sorry.”
Roman’s voice was ice.
“Where are you?”
“Safe.”
“Define safe.”
“Thomas contacted me.”
“Why would you go?”
“Because he thinks I still believe he is my father.”
Roman understood.
Leah was playing him.
Emma did not like it.
“Leah, this is dangerous.”
“I know.”
Thomas wanted the paternity report.
He believed destroying it would protect his public legacy.
Leah agreed to exchange it for Catherine’s original letters.
“I need those letters,” Leah said.
Roman said, “You need to live.”
“I need both.”
She gave them a location.
An abandoned train platform scheduled for demolition.
Thomas insisted on coming alone.
Leah insisted Roman stay away.
Roman said yes.
Then immediately planned not to.
Emma caught him.
“You just promised.”
“I lied.”
“That is not comforting.”
He looked at her.
“I don’t break promises casually.”
“You did it in seven seconds.”
Roman almost smiled.
They compromised again.
Leah would go.
Federal agents would observe.
Roman would remain out of sight.
Emma stayed with Roman in a maintenance corridor overlooking the platform.
Thomas arrived carrying a leather folder.
Leah stood beneath the old clock.
“You look like Catherine,” Thomas said.
Leah’s face changed.
“Don’t.”
“I raised you.”
“You moved me.”
“I protected you.”
“You lied to me.”
Thomas stepped closer.
“I loved you.”
Leah’s eyes filled.
“That may be true.”
Thomas seemed relieved.
Then she continued.
“And you still hurt me.”
His face hardened.
“Where is the report?”
Leah held up an envelope.
“The letters.”
Thomas offered the folder.
Leah took it.
Then he said, “Dominic Vale never wanted you.”
Roman moved behind the wall.
Emma grabbed his arm.
Wait.
Leah answered.
“Then why did you hide his letters?”
Thomas froze.
She opened the leather folder.
Catherine’s letters were inside.
One included a photograph of Dominic holding infant Lily.
Thomas’s composure broke.
“You were mine.”
“No.”
“I raised you.”
“You controlled me.”
“I kept you away from criminals.”
“You were the criminal.”
Thomas lunged for the envelope.
Leah stepped back.
Federal agents moved.
Thomas stopped.
Then a shot rang out.
Not from Thomas.
From the upper catwalk.
Grant shouted.
Evelyn Price stood above them with a handgun.
Vivian’s chief of staff.
She fired again.
Roman pulled Emma behind concrete.
Agents returned fire.
Evelyn fled.
Thomas dropped to his knees.
Not wounded.
Terrified.
Leah stared upward.
“Why is she shooting at me?”
Thomas laughed.
It was not funny.
It was surrender.
“Because you’re the only person alive who can prove she ordered the warehouse fire.”
Everyone froze.
Grant looked at Thomas.
“What?”
Thomas sat against the platform bench.
“I didn’t order it.”
The old tape.
His voice had said burn the warehouse.
But perhaps not the whole context.
Thomas looked at Grant.
“I told them to burn the records room after hours.”
Grant’s face twisted.
“My father was inside.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Who did?”
Thomas looked toward the catwalk where Evelyn disappeared.
“Evelyn.”
Roman stared.
Thomas continued.
“She moved the schedule. Locked two men inside. Then told me it was too late to change the story.”
Grant looked sick.
Emma understood the real structure now.
Thomas was corrupt.
Dangerous.
Guilty.
But Evelyn had used his crimes to build her own.
Leah whispered, “Why?”
Thomas answered.
“Because Peter Keller and Mason had discovered she was stealing from both sides.”
Grant closed his eyes.
His father had died because he found the thief inside the fraud.
Then Roman’s phone rang.
Vivian.
He answered.
Evelyn had returned to the Foundation.
And Vivian was alone with her.
Before the exchange at the abandoned platform, Leah gave Emma a second envelope.
“If something happens to me, open this.”
Emma refused to take it.
Leah frowned.
“This is not a movie.”
“Exactly.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we stop normalizing people walking into danger while handing out last letters.”
Leah almost laughed.
Emma continued.
“If you think you might die, we change the plan.”
Roman, listening nearby, looked pleased.
Leah glared at him.
“Don’t enjoy this.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“A little.”
The plan changed.
Leah carried no original evidence.
The paternity report was copied.
Catherine’s letters were already scanned.
The federal team had arrest authority if Thomas tried coercion.
For once, nobody’s safety depended on a heroic gamble.
That mattered.
After the shooting, Leah sat in an ambulance with a blanket around her shoulders.
Roman stood nearby.
He had not touched her.
He seemed unsure whether he was allowed.
Leah noticed.
“You can hug me.”
Roman blinked.
“I wasn’t—”
“You were thinking loudly.”
Emma laughed.
Roman glared at her.
“That phrase is spreading.”
Leah stood.
Roman hugged her carefully.
She held on longer.
When they separated, she said, “I spent years imagining what you’d be like.”
“Disappointed?”
“Frequently.”
He almost smiled.
“But not entirely.”
“That is generous.”
Leah looked toward Thomas, now in federal custody.
“He did love me.”
Roman’s expression hardened.
Emma interrupted.
“You’re allowed to know that and still know what he did.”
Leah nodded.
“That’s the hardest part.”
It was easier to hate someone completely.
Harder to accept that a person could make breakfast, remember birthdays, tell bedtime stories—and still build a life around lies.
The federal team recovered the spent rounds from the catwalk.
Ballistics later linked Evelyn’s handgun to another unsolved shooting twelve years earlier.
A former city accountant had survived that attack and disappeared afterward.
He was located in Arizona.
Alive.
Willing to testify.
The conspiracy grew another branch.
Roman looked at the new evidence and said, “Every answer adds a door.”
Emma replied, “Then stop expecting the last room.”
He looked at her.
“That sounded like your father.”
“It sounded like me.”
May you like
Roman smiled.
“Better.”
