Chapter 2 - The Empty Locket and the Phantom Crash
The doctor looked directly into my eyes.
"Mr. Moretti, there's something you need to know about how your ex-wife was found."
My chest tightened.
"The paramedics reported a single-car collision on the icy interstate," Dr. Miller said, her voice dropping to a cautious, almost clinical whisper. "But Hannah’s injuries are inconsistent with the blunt force trauma typical of a steering wheel impact. The fracture to her skull was localized to the back of her head. And the airbag in her vehicle never deployed."
Paige gasped, stepping closer to me. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying," the doctor replied grimly, "that someone struck her from behind with a heavy object before the car crashed. The crash was staged."
The harsh fluorescent lights of the emergency room seemed to flicker. I felt the air vanish from my lungs. A staged crash. Someone hadn't just tried to hurt my ex-wife. They had tried to execute her and our unborn child, disguising it as a tragic winter accident.
"Where is she?" I demanded, my voice dropping to a dangerous, vibrating pitch that made the doctor take a subconscious step backward.
"She’s in the ICU. Room 4B. She is stabilized, but she is comatose."
I didn't wait. I pushed past the doctor, striding down the sterile white hallway. My men flanked me instantly, their hands drifting toward their concealed weapons, sensing the sudden shift in my demeanor. The grief I had felt ten minutes ago was entirely consumed by a cold, calculating rage.
I reached Room 4B. Through the glass, I saw her.
Hannah looked so small, enveloped in the white hospital sheets. A bandage wrapped around her head, and an IV line snaked into her pale arm. Six years of marriage. Six years of trying to protect her from the darkness of my world, only to realize I was the reason the darkness had found her.
I opened the door and walked to her bedside.
I gently took her cold hand in mine. I traced the line of her knuckles, remembering the day she signed the divorce papers. The day I broke her heart to save her life.
"I'm so sorry, Hannah," I whispered, pressing her hand to my lips. "I thought setting you free would keep you safe."
Paige walked quietly into the room, standing beside me.
"Lucas," my sister said softly. "If someone tried to kill her... who?"
"My father," I said without hesitation.
Paige frowned. "Dad has been dead for three months. He had a heart attack a week after your divorce was finalized."
"My father didn't die of a heart attack, Paige," I corrected, my eyes remaining fixed on Hannah’s pale face. "I poisoned him."
Paige gasped, stumbling backward until she hit the wall.
"I didn't have a choice," I confessed, the weight of the last three months pressing heavily on my chest. "He found out Hannah was going to expose the offshore shell companies to the feds. He told me he was going to have her killed. I divorced her to make him think she meant nothing to me, to buy myself time to take him out. I killed him to protect her."
Paige stared at me, horrified, processing the truth of our father’s sudden death.
"If Dad is dead," Paige asked, her voice trembling, "then who ordered the hit tonight?"
I reached out and gently brushed a stray curl from Hannah’s forehead. My fingers brushed against a thin silver chain resting around her neck.
I frowned. Hannah never wore silver.
I carefully pulled the chain from beneath her hospital gown. Attached to it was a heavy, tarnished silver locket.
It wasn't Hannah’s. It was the locket my mother had worn until the day she died. The locket my father had kept locked in his private safe.
"Why is she wearing Mom’s locket?" Paige breathed, recognizing it instantly.
I pressed the small clasp on the side. The locket popped open.
It was empty. The small photographs of Paige and me that used to reside inside were gone. But tucked into the right side of the casing was a tiny, folded piece of parchment paper.
I pulled it out with trembling fingers.
The handwriting was unmistakably my father’s.
Lucas, if you are reading this, it means you betrayed me. And it means the true heir to my empire has finally claimed what you tried to steal. You should have checked the brakes, son.
I stared at the note, my blood turning to ice.
My father had known I was going to kill him. He had orchestrated his own death, using a body double to fake the heart attack, while he slipped into the shadows to direct his loyalists against me.
"He's alive," I whispered, crushing the paper in my fist. "He faked his death."
"But who is the 'true heir'?" Paige asked, panic rising in her voice. "It’s just you and me, Lucas."
Before I could answer, my phone vibrated violently in my pocket.
I pulled it out. It was a restricted number.
I answered it, putting it on speaker. "Yes."
"Hello, little brother."
The voice was smooth, cultured, and carried a faint, mocking warmth.
I froze.
It was a voice I hadn't heard in twenty years. A voice belonging to a man I had buried when I was nineteen years old.
"Julian," I breathed, utter disbelief warring with mounting terror.
"It’s been a long time, Lucas," my older brother chuckled softly over the line. "I hear the hospital coffee is terrible. How is the ex-wife holding up?"
"You're dead," I stated flatly. "You died in a warehouse fire."
"I survived a warehouse fire that you set, Lucas," Julian corrected, his tone sharpening into a lethal edge. "Father pulled me out of the ashes. He kept me hidden in Europe for two decades, waiting for the day you proved you were too weak to lead the family."
Julian had always been my father’s favorite. Ruthless. Bloodthirsty. I had tried to stop his reign of terror twenty years ago by burning down his illicit operation, believing I had killed him in the process. I had carried that guilt my entire adult life, using it to build a strict code for my own syndicate.
But he wasn't dead. He had been waiting.
"You hit Hannah's car tonight," I snarled, stepping away from the hospital bed.
"I did," Julian admitted easily. "Consider it a warning shot. Father wants his empire back. He wants the offshore accounts, the real estate, and the loyalty of the eight hundred men you currently control. Sign them over to me by sunrise."
"And if I don't?"
"Then my next visit to Wayne County General won't be a staged car crash," Julian promised. "I’ll walk into Room 4B and finish the job myself. Tell Hannah congratulations on the pregnancy, by the way. It’s a shame the child will never know its father."
The line went dead.
I lowered the phone, my jaw clenched so tightly a muscle feathered against my cheek.
My father was alive. My psychotic brother was alive. They had my mother’s locket. And they had just threatened the life of the woman I loved and my unborn child.
"What do we do, Lucas?" Paige asked, tears spilling down her cheeks.
May you like
I looked at the four armed guards standing outside Hannah’s door. Then, I looked at the crushed parchment paper in my hand.
"We go to war," I said quietly.
