Chapter 107

Chapter 107

Diana didn't sleep.



She sat propped against the headboard with Holden curled in the crook of her arm, watching his chest rise and fall. Every few minutes, she pressed her fingers lightly to his wrist, counting his heartbeat, reassuring herself he was real.



Nicholas had retreated to the chair in the far corner. He hadn't left. Hadn't spoken. The distance between them felt like a canyon.



At six in the morning, the encrypted phone on the bedside table buzzed.



Diana glanced at the screen. An unknown number. She answered.



"Congratulations on the family reunion." The voice was male, calm, and faintly amused. "Touching, really."



Diana's blood went cold. She recognized the cadence — the same unhurried mockery from the cemetery, from the cargo ship's hold.



"Who is this?"



"You already know. But since we're being formal — Timothy King."



Nicholas was on his feet instantly. He crossed the room in two strides, but Diana tilted the phone so they could both hear.



"What do you want?" Diana's arm tightened around Holden.



"A conversation. Face to face. No guns, no bodyguards. Just the three of us." Timothy paused. "I have something that belongs to you, Diana. The complete surveillance footage from the night your mother-in-law died. Unedited. Untampered."



The air in the room stopped moving.



"And before Nicholas wastes time trying to trace this call — don't bother. I'm already inside Sunrise City. I've been here for two days."



Nicholas grabbed the phone. "If you come near her again—"



"Relax, Kennedy. If I wanted her dead, she'd have died on that cargo ship. I kept her alive on purpose. She's the only one in this entire mess who deserves to know the truth."



"Pier 12. The old customs warehouse. Ten o'clock this morning. Come alone or come together — I don't care. But if I see military helicopters, the footage gets uploaded to every server on the planet, and you can explain to the world what really happened to your mother."



The line went dead.



Nicholas stared at the phone, the muscles in his jaw working.



"It's a trap," he said flatly.



"Obviously." Diana carefully shifted Holden to the center of the bed, tucking the blanket around him. "But he has the footage."



"We don't know if it's real."



"We don't know if it's fake either." Diana met his eyes. "For three years, you've been so certain my mother killed yours that you destroyed my entire life over it. Now someone's offering proof — and you don't want to see it?"



The accusation landed exactly where she'd aimed it.



Nicholas's nostrils flared. He turned to the window, staring out at the gray morning sky.



"If we go," he said quietly, "David's team provides perimeter cover. Non-negotiable."



"Fine."



At ten o'clock, a black SUV pulled up to the rusted gates of the old customs warehouse at Pier 12.



Diana stepped out first. Nicholas followed, his hand hovering near the small of his back where a Glock sat concealed.



The warehouse was cavernous, its corrugated roof leaking thin streams of morning light. Dust motes drifted in the pale beams.



Timothy King sat on a shipping crate in the center of the space, legs crossed, a laptop open beside him. He'd traded the tactical gear for a simple black jacket. Without the baseball cap, his face was fully visible for the first time — sharp features, early forties, a thin scar running from his left temple to his jaw.



"Right on time." He gestured to two folding chairs set up across from him. "Sit."



Neither of them sat.



Timothy shrugged. "Suit yourselves."



He turned the laptop screen toward them and pressed play.



The footage was from a dashcam — not the official traffic cameras that had been tampered with, but a private vehicle parked on the shoulder of the road that night.



The timestamp read three years ago. 11:47 PM.



Kenna's silver sedan appeared on the rain-slicked road. It was moving at normal speed.



Then a second vehicle — a dark SUV with no plates — pulled alongside.



It wasn't an accident. The SUV deliberately swerved into Kenna's lane, clipping her rear quarter panel. Her sedan spun, hit the guardrail, and flipped.



The SUV stopped. A figure in black got out, walked to the wreckage, and stood there for eleven seconds — watching — before getting back in and driving away.



Diana's stomach turned.



"That's not my mother's car," she said, her voice tight. "That's not Gemma."



"No. It isn't." Timothy closed the laptop. "Gemma was at home that night. Phone records, building security footage, her neighbor's testimony — all confirm it. She never left her apartment."



Nicholas hadn't moved. His face was carved from stone.



"The SUV belongs to a shell company," Timothy continued. "Three layers of corporate veils. But when you peel them all back, the registered owner is someone you both know."



He pulled a manila folder from behind the crate and tossed it onto the concrete floor between them.



Diana picked it up. Inside were corporate registration documents, bank transfer records, and a single photograph.



The photograph showed Ryder Russell shaking hands with a man in a dark suit outside a law office. The date stamp was two weeks before Kenna's death.



"Ryder?" Diana's hands shook.



"Your father had been laundering money through Kennedy Group subsidiaries for years — with Kenna's knowledge. She'd been turning a blind eye as a favor to Gemma, who'd asked her to help Ryder stay afloat financially after the divorce."



Timothy's voice was clinical, detached.



"But Kenna eventually discovered the scale of the fraud. She told Ryder she was going to report it. He panicked. Hired professionals through a dark web broker — my former colleagues in The Scavengers, as it happens — to make it look like an accident."



"Afterward, he planted evidence pointing to Gemma. The doctored surveillance footage. The suspicious bank transfers in her account. The fight between Gemma and Kenna the day before — which Ryder himself had orchestrated by feeding Kenna false information about Gemma."



"Everything Nicholas believed about his mother's death was built on a frame job designed by Diana's own father."



The warehouse fell silent except for the distant cry of seagulls.



Nicholas's face had gone completely white. His lips were slightly parted, but no sound came out.



Three years.



Three years of hatred. Three years of systematically destroying the woman standing beside him. The abortion. The stolen heart. The imprisonment. The humiliation.



All of it built on a lie told by a man who'd smiled at him across a dinner table and called him "son."



"Why?" Nicholas's voice was barely recognizable. "Why are you telling us this?"



Timothy stood up from the crate.



"Because Kenna was kind to me once, a long time ago. Before I became what I am." Something unreadable passed through his eyes. "And because Ryder hired The Scavengers to clean up his mess, and when the organization decided to blackmail him for more money, he had two of my men killed. Isabella was going to testify about what she'd seen. He had her killed too."



He looked at Diana.



"Your father is a murderer. And he's been hiding behind his daughters — both of you — this entire time."



Timothy picked up his laptop and walked toward the back exit.



"The footage and documents are yours. Do what you want with them."



He paused at the door.



"One more thing." He glanced back at Diana. "Your fake gastric ulcer diagnosis — that was Ryder too. He bribed a radiologist at the hospital to alter your scans. He wanted you sick enough to be dependent, but not so sick that Nicholas would actually investigate. A manageable level of broken."



"He did the same thing to Gemma's medical records before her collapse. Delayed her treatment by months."



Diana felt the floor tilt beneath her.



Her own father had been slowly killing both her and her mother — not with a knife, but with falsified medical reports and carefully managed neglect.



Timothy disappeared through the back door.



David's voice crackled through Nicholas's earpiece. "We've got eyes on him. Want us to pursue?"



Nicholas stood motionless for a long time.



"Let him go."



He turned to Diana. She was still holding the manila folder, staring at Ryder's photograph.



"Diana—"



"Don't." She held up her hand without looking at him. "Don't say you're sorry. Don't say you didn't know. You chose to believe the lie because it was easier than questioning it. You had every resource in the world to investigate, and you never once tried. Because hating my mother — hating me — gave you something to hold onto."



Nicholas's mouth opened. Then closed.



Because she was right.