Chapter 20 The Man Behind The Glass
POV: Sebastian Blackwell
My father had been dead for seven years.
I had never believed him.
Belief and proof were different things.
Proof waited inside the crypt.
Elena sat beside me in the armoured vehicle, checking her weapon for the third time.
“You’re carrying six rounds,” I said.
“I know.”
“You checked twice.”
“And now three times.”
“Nervous?”
“About meeting the man who may have killed my mother and used your brother as his corpse? Slightly.”
I looked toward the passing trees.
“He will try to divide us.”
“We’re already divided on several subjects.”
“He will exploit that.”
“Then perhaps you should tell me anything he might use.”
I deserved the challenge.
“Gideon contacted me once after his funeral.”
Her body became very still.
“When?”
“Six months later.”
“Before my father died.”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“That Alexander betrayed him. That I needed to take control of Blackwell & Co. and wait.”
“For what?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Did you tell anyone?”
“Daniel.”
She glanced toward the front seat.
Daniel kept his attention on the road.
“And when you saw Gideon at my house?”
“I knew the call had been real.”
“Yet you let the world believe he was dead.”
“I wanted him to feel safe enough to make a mistake.”
“Seven years is a long surveillance operation.”
“You would know.”
Her gaze cut toward me.
“That was cruel.”
“Yes.”
“You’re supposed to deny it.”
“New rules.”
Some of the tension left her shoulders.
I reached for her hand.
She allowed me to take it.
“Whatever he says,” I told her, “remember that Gideon never gives truth without attaching a weapon.”
“That sounds hereditary.”
“Unfortunately.”
The cemetery gates stood open.
No guards.
No movement.
We entered through the eastern path while Daniel’s team surrounded the grounds.
The Blackwell crypt was older than the Caruso section and considerably less beautiful. Gideon believed grief should intimidate, so the structure resembled a fortress built for bones.
I remembered helping him choose the stone.
I had been nineteen. Alexander had called the design a monument to a man too arrogant to imagine dying. Gideon struck him across the mouth in front of the architect, then asked me whether I agreed.
I said no.
That night, I found Alexander cleaning blood from his teeth in our bathroom.
“You’re a terrible liar, Seb,” he had said.
“I kept him from hitting me.”
“That was the point.”
I hadn’t understood.
Alexander wanted me to learn that avoiding pain could make me complicit in someone else’s.
Seven years later, I stood at the entrance to our father’s grave beside a woman I had protected through the same kind of silence.
Elena touched my arm.
“Where did you go?”
“The last time I stood here with Alexander.”
“He attended the funeral?”
“He left before the coffin arrived.”
“Why?”
“I thought he couldn’t bear it.”
Now I wondered whether he knew the coffin would be empty.
Elena glanced at the carved doors.
“Subtle.”
“He designed it.”
“Of course.”
Inside, candles burned around Gideon’s open coffin.
It was empty.
My father stood behind a glass wall where the altar should have been.
Bulletproof.
He wore a dark suit and no visible weapon.
“Sebastian.”
His voice had not changed.
My body remembered it before my mind did.
Shoulders straight.
Face blank.
Never give him the reaction.
Elena’s fingers tightened around mine.
The fear loosened.
Gideon saw.
“You found something worth protecting.”
“You summoned us,” I said. “Talk.”
His gaze moved to Elena.
“Your mother was always impatient too.”
“Did you kill her?”
“No.”
“Did you order it?”
“No.”
“Did you know Matteo would?”
Gideon smiled.
“Better.”
Elena raised her weapon.
“Answer.”
“Matteo believed Isabella had the first key. I advised him that killing her would make recovery difficult.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It is the only one you receive tonight.”
I stepped closer to the glass.
“Where is Alexander?”
For the first time, my father’s expression changed.
Regret.
Or an imitation of it.
“Lost.”
“Alive?”
“When I last saw him.”
“Prague?”
His eyes flicked toward Elena.
He hadn’t expected us to know.
“What did you do to Michael?” I asked.
“Michael volunteered.”
“To burn alive?”
“To give this family a future.”
Rage broke through the training he had beaten into me.
I fired.
The bullet flattened against the glass.
Gideon didn’t flinch.
Elena lowered my weapon.
Not by force.
Her hand covered mine.
“He wants you angry.”
My own words from the burning cottage.
I released the trigger.
My father’s approval sickened me.
“She improves you.”
“You don’t get to speak about her.”
“Then I’ll speak to her.”
He looked at Elena.
“Luca still works for Matteo.”
“He was tortured.”
“Pain and loyalty are not opposites.”
“Where is my uncle?”
“Closer than Sebastian thinks.”
“And the trust?”
“The marriage opens it. Your deaths transfer it.”
Elena’s face remained controlled, but her pulse jumped beneath my fingers.
“To Matteo?” she asked.
“If he completes the addendum.”
“Why tell us?”
“Because I no longer want him to win.”
I laughed.
“You created him.”
“I underestimated him.”
“You underestimate everyone.”
“Not you.”
“That was your first mistake.”
“No. My first mistake was allowing your mother to make you gentle.”
He touched a control.
Old security footage appeared on the glass.
The Caruso estate.
The night Antonio died.
I saw myself enter the study.
Minutes later, another Blackwell appeared through the east corridor.
Not Gideon.
Alexander.
Elena stared.
“He was there.”
“Your brother shot my father?”
“No.”
I watched Alexander disappear into the corridor where I later heard a woman say, You promised she wouldn’t be here.
The footage skipped.
I replayed the missing three seconds twice. The jump was almost invisible, hidden inside the flash of gunfire, but Elena saw it too.
“Someone edited the source,” she said.
“The camera system wrote directly to magnetic archive. It should be impossible.”
Gideon’s voice came through the glass. “Impossible is a word rich men sell to frightened people.”
I ignored him and enlarged the reflection in the study window. A fourth shape stood beyond the camera’s view: narrow shoulders, a white sleeve, a hand raised toward Antonio.
Elena pressed closer to the glass. “My mother.”
“Perhaps.”
“You know the dress.”
I did. Isabella had worn white at the Caruso midsummer dinner, hours before the attack. When I carried Elena through the rain, blood had covered the front of it.
“Why would she raise a gun at him?” Elena asked.
“We cannot see a gun.”
“We can’t see her hand.”
Gideon laughed softly. “There he is. My cautious son, protecting a dead woman with grammar.”
Elena’s hand found mine below the console. Her fingers were cold, but her grip was certain.
“Show us the unedited footage,” she demanded.
“Bring the ledger.”
“You already have access to the accounts.”
“Money is not what the ledger protects.”
“Names,” I said.
My father’s smile confirmed it.
Elena faced him. “Whose?”
“People your parents decided were more valuable dead.”
Her grip tightened painfully. I wanted to dismiss the claim as manipulation. Antonio and Isabella had saved lives, but I was learning how often rescue and ownership shared a corridor.
“If my parents hurt them,” Elena said, “I’ll expose that too.”
Gideon studied her as if a familiar equation had produced an impossible answer. “That is why Matteo fears you.”
“And you?”
“I fear what my son will become when you discover what he did.”
I felt Elena turn toward me.
I kept my eyes on my father. Whatever memory Gideon was trying to force awake, I would not let him watch it break us.
Antonio lay bleeding.
Isabella knelt beside him.
Then Gideon entered.
Three Blackwell men had been inside the house.
My father touched another control.
The glass darkened.
“Bring me the ledger,” he said. “I will give you Isabella’s killer.”
“And if we refuse?” Elena asked.
“Sebastian already knows.”
Gideon looked at me.
“He simply hasn’t remembered yet.”
Gas flooded the space behind the glass, hiding him.
Daniel’s team breached the rear chamber.
It was empty.
Only an old projector and a white rose remained.
Elena lifted the rose.
Something had been tied beneath its stem.
A strip of blue fabric.
The same shade as the dress Isabella wore inside Elena’s coffin.
Wrapped within it was a human tooth.
The DNA report arrived before we left the cemetery.
It belonged to Alexander.
