Chapter 3 - THE NIGHT I DIED
We played the footage in the security command room.
Wet hair.
Blood on my temple.
Bare feet.
Ethan carried me through the east loading corridor while alarms flashed red.
Behind him walked my brother Nathan.
Alive.
Calm.
Not grieving.
He pointed toward the private medical suite.
Then another figure entered the frame: Dr. Elias Crane, the Bellmont family physician.
He injected something into my arm.
When it returned, the stretcher was empty.
"My yacht exploded at 11:42 p.m."
"This was 1:17 a.m."
"So I survived."
"Yes."
"You knew?"
"For one night."
"One night?"
Ethan's jaw worked.
"Nathan said the explosion was an assassination attempt. He said the people behind it had someone inside local police."
"That part may have been true."
"He ordered me to move you quietly."
"Then what?"
"Dr. Crane told me you crashed during treatment."
"And you believed him?"
"No."
Ethan admitted he followed the medical van after it left the resort.
It went to an abandoned clinic outside the city.
He saw two men carry me inside.
"He said my younger brother would disappear if I came closer."
"I backed off."
"Dad wouldn't do that," Vanessa whispered.
"Your father put me in the ground while I was breathing."
I asked Ethan why the medallion had been scanned three days later.
He said Nathan ordered him to open the founder vault.
"What did he take?"
"I don't know."
"You opened it."
"He went in alone."
"And you never checked?"
"I was afraid."
But fear had fingerprints all over my own missing years.
A woman calling me Anna.
Then nothing clear until a car accident last month knocked loose a memory of the sun-and-waves medallion hidden inside a storage locker.
One item had been removed after the scan.
FOUNDER SUCCESSION LETTER - ORIGINAL.
I turned to Vanessa. "You know what was in it."
May you like
A document had been added to the vault that same night.
My death certificate.
