Chapter 13 - The Woman Walsh Wanted Dead
The Pennsylvania address led to a farmhouse.
Khloe stood on the porch.
Alive.
Damian got out of the SUV before it fully stopped.
He reached her in seconds.
“You disappear one more time—”
“What?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“That’s frightening.”
“Good.”
She looked behind him.
“Where’s Elena?”
“Safe.”
“Nicolas?”
“With her.”
Damian studied Khloe.
“Pierce?”
“Inside.”
“Why?”
“Because Daniel didn’t kidnap me for Walsh.”
“We covered that.”
“No. He was working for someone else.”
“Who?”
An elderly man appeared in the doorway.
Thin.
White-haired.
Walking with two canes.
Khloe’s voice became quiet.
“Thomas Hayes.”
Damian stared.
Impossible.
Thomas would be approximately eighty-seven.
The man looked every year of it.
“Vincent’s boy,” Thomas said.
“Not a boy.”
“To me, you are.”
Damian looked at Khloe.
“You knew?”
“For about ninety minutes.”
“And you couldn’t call?”
“I was verifying he wasn’t another liar.”
Thomas smiled.
“She has Margaret’s personality.”
Inside, Thomas explained.
His death eight years earlier had been staged after Walsh came close to finding him.
Elena believed the false report because Vincent decided fewer people meant fewer leaks.
Even Damian’s father had not known Thomas remained alive after that year.
Daniel Pierce was Thomas’s godson.
Arthur Pierce had helped Thomas hide.
“Daniel was trying to recover the ledger before Walsh,” Thomas said.
“He abducted Khloe,” Damian replied.
Daniel spoke from across the room.
“No. My men took her after Walsh’s team entered her apartment.”
Khloe explained.
Walsh’s men had broken in first.
Daniel’s team intercepted them.
But then one of Daniel’s employees betrayed him.
“He sold my location repeatedly,” Khloe said.
“The one who stabbed you?” Damian asked.
“Yes.”
“Name.”
Daniel answered.
“Evan Bell.”
Bell Security.
The company Nicolas had recommended unknowingly.
Everything connected.
“Bell works for Walsh?” Leo asked.
Thomas shook his head.
“Worse.”
Everyone looked at him.
“He works for Margaret Hayes.”
Khloe stared.
“My grandmother?”
The room became silent.
Khloe’s grandmother had supposedly died twelve years earlier.
Thomas looked heartbroken.
“No.”
He removed a photograph.
The woman Khloe had seen meeting Nicolas.
The woman with the cane.
Elena.
Khloe looked confused.
“That’s Damian’s aunt.”
“No,” Thomas said.
“That woman is not Elena Russo.”
Damian stood.
“What?”
Thomas turned the photo over.
A name.
Margaret Hayes.
Khloe’s grandmother.
Damian felt the room tilt.
“Then where is my aunt?”
Thomas looked at him.
“Dead.”
Nicolas had been meeting someone pretending to be his own mother.
Khloe whispered:
“How?”
Thomas explained.
Elena Russo died in Europe almost five years earlier.
Walsh’s network hid the death.
Margaret Hayes, who had spent decades blaming both Walsh and Russo for destroying her family, assumed Elena’s identity because the two women resembled each other closely enough after years apart and because few people saw Elena regularly.
Nicolas had not lived with his mother since adolescence.
Most communication had been remote.
Damian had spoken to Elena only twice.
“She manipulated Nicolas,” Damian said.
“Yes.”
“She arranged Khloe’s kidnapping?”
“Yes.”
Khloe looked devastated.
“Why would my grandmother do that?”
Thomas’s eyes filled with sadness.
“Because Margaret stopped caring who was guilty.”
May you like
He looked at her.
“She wants every Russo and every Walsh destroyed.”
