Chapter 22 - A VISITOR AT THE PERIMETER
The security monitors in Nicholas’s command annex lit up simultaneously with high-definition thermal feeds. The estate’s outer perimeter—a twelve-foot stone wall topped with razor wire and motion sensors spanning four wooded acres in Westchester—had been breached.
"Sector 4, North Gate," one of Nicholas's tactical commanders shouted over the comms system. "We have a single vehicle approaching the secondary checkpoint. No weapons drawn. Driver has his hands on the steering wheel."
Nicholas walked into the security room, carrying Lucy, who had buried her face into his neck, frightened by the sirens. "Identify the vehicle."
"It's a vintage Jaguar sedan, boss. Plates trace back to a private garage in Queens that was shuttered fifteen years ago."
Nicholas leaned over the monitor. The cameras zoomed in through the rain-streaked windshield.
Behind the wheel sat an old man with thick grey hair, a crooked nose that had clearly been broken more than once, and a jagged scar running from his left ear down into his tweed collar.
Arthur Bell stood in the corner of the room, his eyes bulging as he stared at the screen. A choked sob escaped the butler’s chest.
"Tommy," Arthur wept. "My God... Tommy."
"Open the gate," Nicholas ordered.
"Sir?" the tactical commander hesitated. "We don't know if he's wired. We don't know if it's an ambush."
"Open the gate," Nicholas repeated, his voice brooking no dissent. "Escort him directly to the inner courtyard. Strip the car down to the chassis, but do not touch the man. If a single finger is laid on him without my permission, I will execute whoever does it."
Ten minutes later, the heavy oak doors of the grand foyer opened again.
Thomas Bell stood in the threshold. He wore a damp wool flat cap and a trench coat that had seen better decades. He was seventy-one years old, thinner than Nicholas remembered, but his posture was that of a man who had survived decades in the wilderness of false names and foreign hotel rooms.
Arthur took two trembling steps forward, his hands outstretched like a blind man feeling for a landmark in the dark.
"Tommy..."
Thomas looked at his older brother. The hard, weathered lines around the old man's eyes cracked, and tears spilled down his scarred cheeks. "Artie. You got old, brother."
The two elderly men collided in a fierce, bone-crushing embrace, Arthur weeping openly into his brother's shoulder, thirty years of grief and deception collapsing under the weight of flesh and blood.
Nicholas watched them from five paces away, Lucy resting quietly in his arms. He waited until the brothers separated, their faces wet, before stepping forward.
Thomas looked up. He took off his flat cap, his gaze shifting from Nicholas’s face down to the three-year-old girl in his arms.
"You look just like your father, Nicholas," Thomas whispered. "And she looks just like you."
"Why did you come back, Tommy?" Nicholas asked. "You had twenty-five thousand dollars a month. You had a villa outside Lisbon. You were dead. Why break the surface now?"
Thomas reached into his coat pocket. Two bodyguards immediately raised their sidearms, but Nicholas raised a hand, stopping them.
Thomas pulled out an old, waterlogged leather journal—the companion volume to the White Book.
"Because the checks didn't come from your mother, Nicholas," Thomas said, his voice trembling with a terrifying certainty. "The checks came to keep me away. But three days ago, I received a courier package in Portugal. Inside was a photograph of Daniel Santos’s body on the pavement, and a lock of that little girl's hair."
Nicholas’s jaw tightened. "Who sent it?"
"The same person who ordered Daniel killed," Thomas answered. "The person who has been running the Northern Trust since the day Isabella Caruso supposedly died."
"My mother," Nicholas spat.
May you like
Thomas shook his head, his eyes widening with sorrow. "No, Nicholas. Your mother didn't fake her death. Your mother is dead. She died in that hospital room ten years ago. I know, because I was the one who smuggled her body out to be buried under an unmarked stone in New Jersey so her enemies wouldn't dig her up."
Nicholas felt the room tilt on its axis. "Then who has been using her identity? Who bruised Lucy’s wrist? Who wore the egret brooch?"
