CHAPTER 7 — "THE WOMAN AT MY FATHER'S FUNERAL WASN'T MY MOTHER... SHE WAS WATCHING ME."
The explosion dominated every news channel for days.
Authorities insisted Vanessa Hale had probably died in the fire.
My father didn't believe a word of it.
Neither did I.
People like Vanessa never left loose ends.
They erased them.
Three weeks later, life looked almost normal.
My father slowly recovered from the bullet wound.
Project Lazarus had been shut down.
Dozens of executives had been arrested.
The Hale Corporation's board publicly apologized.
Everyone called it the end.
But every night my father locked every door twice.
Every window.
Every alarm.
He slept with a pistol beneath his pillow.
One rainy evening, I found him staring at an old photograph.
It showed a young woman holding a newborn wrapped in a blue blanket.
The baby's face was mine.
The woman wasn't Vanessa.
She wasn't anyone I recognized.
"Dad..."
"Who is she?"
His hands trembled.
"I prayed you'd never ask."
He slid the photograph toward me.
"Her name was Emily."
"She was your mother."
I frowned.
"You told me she died when I was a baby."
"I lied."
Silence filled the room.
My father closed his eyes.
"She disappeared."
"Not because she wanted to."
"Because someone took her."
The words barely left his mouth before the house lights flickered.
Then...
Every screen in the mansion turned on at once.
Televisions.
Computers.
Tablets.
Even the smart refrigerator.
The same image appeared everywhere.
Vanessa.
Alive.
She wore a white suit instead of black mourning clothes.
Not a scratch on her face.
She smiled directly into the camera.
"Hello, Jonathan."
"I told you this wasn't over."
My father grabbed the remote.
The screen wouldn't turn off.
Vanessa continued.
"You've spent twenty years protecting Ryan."
"But you never protected him..."
"...from the truth."
She held up a faded photograph.
It matched the one on our table.
Emily.
My mother.
Still alive.
Older.
Weak.
Locked inside what looked like a hospital room.
My heart stopped.
Vanessa leaned closer to the camera.
"Ryan."
"If you ever want to meet your real mother..."
"Come alone."
"No police."
"No father."
"No heroes."
She smiled one last time.
"Oh..."
"Ask your father why he never came looking for her."
The transmission ended.
The room went dark.
I turned toward my father.
His face had lost all color.
"Dad..."
"What aren't you telling me?"
He whispered a sentence that shattered everything I thought I knew.
"Because..."
"...the day your mother disappeared..."
"...I believed she had betrayed us."
And for the first time in my life...
May you like
I wasn't sure whether to trust the man who had just saved me...
...or the woman who had buried him alive.
