Chapter 21 A Dead Man's Orders
POV: Elena Caruso
Sebastian crushed the DNA report in his fist.
“A tooth does not prove he’s dead,” I said.
“No.”
“Gideon wants you to think it does.”
“Yes.”
“Then stop helping him.”
His dark eyes met mine.
He opened his hand.
The report was creased but readable.
“You’re very calm.”
“I’m deciding whether to shoot your father in the other knee after you choose the first.”
“He was behind bulletproof glass.”
“Next time we bring a larger gun.”
Daniel approached with a tablet.
“The chamber behind the glass connects to a tunnel leaving the cemetery. Gideon was never physically present during the conversation.”
“A live projection,” I said.
“Yes.”
“He could be anywhere.”
“Not anywhere.” Daniel displayed a network map. “The signal bounced through several sites, but the original feed used a private Blackwell satellite.”
Sebastian’s expression hardened.
“Alexander designed that network.”
“Could he still access it?” I asked.
“If he’s alive.”
The empty coffin waited behind us.
I walked toward it.
A white rose rested on the pillow.
Its stem had been cut recently, but the bloom carried the brown edge of age. Wax coated the petals.
“Preserved,” I said.
Daniel scanned it.
“There’s metal inside.”
He split the stem carefully and removed a narrow memory card.
The first file showed the Caruso estate from above on the night my father died. Three vehicles approached through different gates.
The second showed my motel two days later.
I appeared at the window, twenty-two years old, hair cut badly with stolen scissors.
My mother stood across the road.
Alive.
She wore a blue scarf and watched me close the curtains.
I gripped the edge of Gideon’s coffin.
“She came to me.”
Sebastian viewed the timestamp.
“Before your funeral.”
“Why didn’t she knock?”
No one answered.
In the final seconds, a man entered the frame behind her.
Fair hair.
Tall.
Alexander Blackwell took my mother’s arm and led her away.
The footage had been captured by Gideon.
He knew I survived from the beginning.
The question was no longer when the Blackwells found me.
It was why Gideon allowed me to remain free.
Sebastian studied the image of Alexander leading my mother away.
“He knew about you before I did.”
“Does that bother you?”
“Everything about my brother knowing your life while leaving me ignorant bothers me.”
“Perhaps he was protecting me.”
“That word is losing its appeal.”
“Good.”
He looked at me.
“You enjoy my moral development.”
“Immensely. It’s slow, but the scenery is excellent.”
His mouth almost curved.
Even among coffins, we could still find a reason not to drown.
Gideon’s name was engraved on the bronze plate. The silk lining showed no sign that a body had ever rested there.
“Why hold a funeral with an empty coffin if Michael’s body was recovered?” I asked.
“The remains were too damaged for viewing,” Sebastian said. “The coroner released ashes after testing.”
“Then Michael wasn’t in this coffin.”
“No.”
I ran my hand along the lining.
Something scratched beneath my fingers.
I pulled the silk back.
Numbers had been carved into the wood.
Three.
Five.
Two.
Eight.
The music-box code.
Below it was a sentence.
OBEY THE DEAD UNTIL THE GARDEN OPENS.
“This was here before tonight,” I said.
Sebastian examined the aged cuts.
“Likely.”
“Who prepared the coffin?”
“A Blackwell funeral company.”
“Owned by?”
“Gideon.”
Daniel searched company records.
“The preparation order was signed by Alexander.”
The brothers had been leaving messages for each other through coffins while I was learning how to become Mara Lane.
I used the code on the small keypad hidden beneath the bronze plate.
A panel opened.
Inside was a recorder.
Gideon’s voice filled the crypt.
“Sebastian, if you are hearing this, either I have failed or you have finally learned to disobey me intelligently.”
Sebastian became motionless.
“The Rosarium has been compromised. Antonio believes Matteo built a second ledger. Isabella believes one of my sons betrayed us. They are both correct.”
Static interrupted the recording.
“You will inherit Blackwell & Co. You will appear to cooperate with every investigation while protecting the routes marked with white roses. Do not open the joint trust. Do not approach Elena Caruso. If Antonio’s daughter survives, she is the only person who can identify the traitor.”
The recording clicked off.
I looked at Sebastian.
“You approached me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because he ordered me not to.”
That should not have made my heart move.
It did.
“You hired me to identify a traitor?”
“At first, I hired you because your employment application appeared inside a restricted system connected to the Rosarium.”
“Matteo placed me at Blackwell & Co.”
“Or Gideon. Someone wanted you close.”
“And you kept me close.”
His gaze moved across my face.
“For reasons that stopped being strategic very quickly.”
Daniel pretended to study the tunnel.
I turned back to the recorder before the heat in my cheeks embarrassed me further.
A second file began automatically.
This voice belonged to a younger man.
Alexander.
The voice changed Sebastian before my eyes. His shoulders remained square, but the careful distance behind his expression disappeared. For a moment he was not the man who controlled a company, a security team and every doorway around me. He was a younger brother listening to a ghost.
“How old was he when he recorded this?” I asked.
“Twenty-eight.”
The answer came immediately. Sebastian knew the years of Alexander’s life the way I knew the dates on family graves.
“Did he always call you Seb?”
“Only when he wanted me to listen.”
I took his hand. There were moments when asking permission mattered; there were others when the open curl of his fingers was the question. He closed them around mine.
Alexander breathed on the recording, alive inside a machine while we stood beneath his father’s grave.
“If he comes back,” Sebastian said quietly, “I don’t know whether I will forgive him or hit him.”
“Both can be arranged.”
His thumb moved over my knuckle. “You make violence sound therapeutic.”
“My family had unusual medical care.”
Daniel turned his face away, but not before I saw a smile.
The small warmth vanished when another sound came through the recording: a child crying somewhere behind Alexander’s voice. Not one child. Several.
Daniel isolated the channel. A woman was counting slowly in Italian, calming them during movement.
“My mother,” I said.
Sebastian leaned nearer to the speaker. The count reached nine, paused, then began again.
Nine children. Nine lives hidden inside a message we had treated as a family confession.
“We find them too,” I said.
He looked at me. “Even if they prove our parents were responsible?”
“Especially then.”
The answer seemed to settle something in him. He lifted my hand to his mouth, a brief press of lips against skin that felt more intimate than any public claim.
I let the touch remain after his mouth lifted, storing its warmth beside Alexander’s recorded voice. The living and the lost were sharing the same underground room. I could not restore any of them, but I could refuse the family habit of treating love as a reason to hide what hurt.
Then Alexander began to speak.
“Seb, if Father says I betrayed him, believe that I did.”
Sebastian closed his eyes.
“I found the children,” Alexander continued. “Not all the routes are rescues. Matteo and Gideon built the refuge around something worse. Isabella has the names. I’m taking her out.”
My breath caught.
“If you find the girl, don’t give her to Father. Don’t give her to me. Let Elena stay dead.”
A door slammed in the recording.
Alexander spoke faster.
“Michael agreed to the yacht. He doesn’t know what Gideon plans to do. I’m going back.”
The file ended.
Sebastian stared at the recorder.
“Alexander knew my father intended to use Michael.”
“He may have tried to stop it.”
Daniel received an alert.
“Movement outside.”
We drew our weapons.
Footsteps approached through the main entrance.
Luca appeared.
His face was bruised. Fresh blood darkened the bandage beneath his jacket.
He raised both hands.
“Before you shoot me, Elena, you should know Gideon lied.”
“About what?”
Luca looked at Sebastian.
“Alexander isn’t lost.”
“Where is he?” Sebastian asked.
“Standing behind you.”
Sebastian turned.
A man emerged from the dark tunnel with a gun aimed at his brother’s heart.
