Chapter 4 - The Twelve-Year Lie
"Clara, listen to me, please!" Nathaniel begged, his voice filled with desperation as he leaned over the microphone. "I never died! I never stopped looking for you! Every single day for twelve years, I walked down Aldridge Street hoping to see your face!"
"Stop lying!" my mother sobbed through the phone, her anger bursting through the line. "I saw the letter! I saw the signed documents from your lawyer! You sent Julian to my apartment when I was twenty! He told me I was a disgrace to the family name! He gave me a plane ticket and told me that if I ever came back to this city, you would have me arrested for fraud! And six months later, Julian called me to say you died of a heart attack!"
Nathaniel sank into his leather chair, holding his head in his hands as a gut-wrenching sob escaped his chest.
"Julian..." Nathaniel growled, his voice laced with pure poison. "It was Julian all along. He forged those documents, Clara. He faked my death to keep you away! I never wrote those letters! I cried every night when you vanished! I built a foundation in your name!"
I stepped toward the phone, grabbing the receiver with both my small hands. "Mom! It's true! The bad man upstairs—Julian—he tried to hurt us! But Mr. Graves protected me! He cried when he saw my eviction notice because your name was written on it! Mom, he has pictures of you all over his desk in here!"
Over the phone, my mother began to weep uncontrollably—a sound of heartbreak, confusion, and twelve years of stolen life finally breaking through her defense.
"Ruby..." my mother sobbed. "Is... is he telling the truth?"
"Yes, Mom! He's my grandpa!" I shouted cheerfully, tears of joy streaming down my cheeks.
"Clara," Nathaniel said, pulling himself together and standing up tall. "I am sending a private security team to our old house right now to bring you here. You will never have to work another shift. You will never have to worry about rent, or food, or eviction ever again. You are my daughter, and everything I own belongs to you and Ruby."
"Father..." Clara whispered, the word sounding heavy, strange, yet deeply comforting on her lips. "I want to come home. I want my baby back."
"I'm sending Leo, my chief of personal security, to pick you up right now," Nathaniel assured her. "Stay inside the apartment until he arrives."
Nathaniel pressed a button on his terminal to dispatch his trusted personal guard, Leo, who was off-duty at his home outside the city.
Suddenly, the computer screens inside the vault flickered violently.
The red emergency lights turned off, replaced by a harsh, blinding yellow light. The hum of the server racks stopped as the main power grid to the vault was cut off, switching automatically to backup battery power.
On the main central monitor, a live video feed popped up.
Julian was standing in the building's control room on the 50th floor, holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a heavy thermal drill in the other. Behind him were six men in heavy body armor carrying commercial demolition gear.
"Did you enjoy your little family reunion over the satellite line, Nathaniel?" Julian asked through the monitor screen, his eyes filled with dark, psychotic amusement. "I must admit, it was almost touching. But you forgot one tiny detail."
Julian pointed the camera toward a large schematic blueprint of the building laid out on the table.
"You built this vault to withstand explosives from the outside," Julian grinned wickedly. "But you vented the oxygen pipes through the 58th floor maintenance shaft. And guess who just cut the main air supply valves?"
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My heart stopped. I looked up at the ceiling vents. The soft hum of circulating air had completely stopped.
"You have about forty-five minutes of oxygen left in that pretty little box, brother," Julian sneered into the camera. "Hand over the master digital key to the company assets and sign the power-of-attorney documents, or you and that little bastard girl will suffocate together in the dark."
