CHAPTER 4: "THE MAN IN THE GRAVE WAS NEVER MY FATHER..."
Ethan couldn't breathe.
The gold watch trembled in Victor's hand.
It was impossible.
He had placed that watch on his father's wrist himself before the casket was closed.
He had watched the coffin disappear beneath the ground.
He had cried over that grave for fifteen years.
So how...
How was Victor holding it now?
Victor smiled.
"You've been mourning the wrong man, Ethan."
Eleanor stepped in front of her son.
"Don't listen to him! He's trying to break you."
Victor laughed.
"Am I?"
He snapped his fingers.
One of his men rolled a large television into the tunnel.
The screen flickered.
Security footage appeared.
A funeral home.
The date matched the day Ethan buried his father.
Ethan stared in disbelief as two men quietly wheeled his father's coffin into a private room after the funeral service had ended.
Moments later...
The lid opened.
A body wearing his father's clothes was lifted out.
Then another man...
Alive...
Stepped into the coffin.
His face was completely covered with medical bandages.
The lid closed.
The coffin was sealed again.
Ethan felt the ground disappear beneath him.
"No..."
Victor looked directly into Ethan's eyes.
"The man you buried wasn't your father."
"It was a terminal patient who volunteered to die under another name."
Eleanor burst into tears.
"I never knew..."
Victor nodded.
"Of course you didn't."
"Only three people knew the truth."
"Me..."
"Your father..."
"And the man who made the exchange."
Ethan's heart pounded.
"If he's alive..."
"Where is he?"
Victor's smile slowly disappeared.
"I've been asking myself that same question for fifteen years."
Silence filled the tunnel.
Then Victor reached into his jacket and pulled out a faded photograph.
It showed Ethan's father...
Standing beside an elderly man inside a mountain cabin.
The photo had been taken only three weeks earlier.
Three weeks.
Not fifteen years ago.
Three weeks.
Ethan grabbed the picture with shaking hands.
"My father..."
"He's alive."
Victor nodded slowly.
"Very much alive."
"And that's exactly why everyone is hunting you."
Before Ethan could ask another question, a deafening explosion shook the tunnel.
The ceiling cracked.
Dust rained from above.
One of Victor's guards shouted,
"Sir! We've lost contact with every team outside!"
Another explosion.
Even closer.
The lights went out.
Darkness swallowed the tunnel.
Then...
One by one...
Victor's armed men began collapsing.
No gunshots.
No screams.
Just bodies hitting the ground.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
Night-vision goggles lit up across the tunnel.
Someone was taking them out with impossible precision.
Victor's confident smile vanished.
His voice shook for the first time.
"No..."
"It can't be..."
A calm voice echoed through the darkness.
"I told you fifteen years ago..."
"...if you ever came after my son again..."
"...I'd come back for all of you."
Ethan froze.
He knew that voice.
Every bedtime story.
Every birthday.
Every fishing trip.
He had heard that voice his entire childhood.
Tears filled his eyes.
"Dad...?"
A figure stepped into the emergency lights.
Older.
A little thinner.
A long scar crossed his face.
But there was no mistaking him.
His father was alive.
He raised a rifle toward Victor without taking his eyes off Ethan.
Then he smiled.
"Son..."
"I'm sorry I couldn't come home sooner."
Victor slowly lifted his hands...
And whispered seven words that changed everything.
May you like
"Don't trust him... He's not the hero."
To Be Continued...
