Chapter 13 - GRANT’S TWENTY PHOTOGRAPHS
Grant had taken one photograph of Claire every year.
Twenty photographs.
Most were shot through the narrow food hatch.
Some showed only her hands.
Others showed her asleep.
One captured her standing beside the wall of tally marks.
Grant had sent them to Jonathan Vale as proof that Claire remained alive.
In exchange, Vale kept Daniel alive.
Or at least that was what Grant claimed.
Claire sat across from her cousin in an interrogation room.
“Why didn’t you tell my parents?”
“I didn’t know where they were.”
“You could have told police.”
“Vale threatened my mother.”
“Everyone threatened everyone.”
Claire’s voice sharpened.
“And somehow I was always the person who paid for it.”
Grant lowered his head.
“Yes.”
Claire blinked.
She had expected excuses.
Grant gave her none.
“I was a coward.”
“Yes.”
“I told myself keeping you hidden kept Uncle Daniel alive.”
“You never asked me.”
“No.”
“You never told me my father was alive.”
“No.”
“You watched me grow up behind that door.”
Grant’s eyes filled with tears.
“Yes.”
Claire stood.
“Then you can spend the rest of your life watching a prison door from the other side.”
She left.
Outside, Ethan waited.
Claire kept walking.
He followed.
She reached the end of the corridor before stopping.
“I thought finding my parents would fix something.”
“It may eventually.”
“It doesn’t.”
“No.”
She looked at him.
“Everything hurts more.”
“Because now you know what was taken.”
Claire nodded.
Federal prosecutors began constructing cases against Vivian, Grant, Melissa, surviving trustees, bankers, and former employees connected to Jonathan Vale.
Melissa remained missing.
That bothered Ethan.
A woman willing to burn Claire alive was not finished.
Marcus agreed.
“We found her car outside Syracuse.”
“Blood?”
“None.”
“Phone?”
“Inside.”
“She planned it.”
“Yes.”
Ethan increased Claire’s security.
Claire hated it.
She tolerated it because her parents were coming to New York under protection.
Their reunion happened two days later.
No cameras.
No lawyers.
No police inside the room.
Claire entered first.
Daniel stood when he saw her.
For several seconds neither moved.
Then he opened his arms.
Claire remained still.
Daniel lowered them.
“I understand.”
Claire stared at him.
“I don’t.”
“No.”
“You don’t.”
Her voice cracked.
“I don’t understand how parents who loved me could leave me in that house.”
Elizabeth began crying.
“We failed you.”
Claire looked at her.
“Yes.”
No forgiveness came.
Not yet.
Daniel nodded.
“Yes.”
That was the first honest answer that gave Claire any relief.
They talked for six hours.
Her parents told her everything.
Claire told them almost nothing.
At the end, Daniel reached into his coat.
“I kept this.”
He placed a small silver key on the table.
Claire recognized it.
The key had belonged to a music box in her childhood bedroom.
“What does it open?”
“Not the music box.”
Daniel looked toward Ethan.
“It opens Jonathan Vale’s final archive.”
Ethan frowned.
“Where?”
Daniel gave him an address.
Ethan recognized it instantly.
May you like
Hale Tower.
His own corporate headquarters.
