CHAPTER 9 — THE FUNERAL HE PROMISED
CHAPTER 9 — THE FUNERAL HE PROMISED
Eleanor survived the gunshot.
The bullet struck below her ribs and passed through without damaging her spine.
Doctors took her into surgery while Ruiz organized the search for Rebecca.
Charles had escaped through the oldest section of the wine tunnels.
Some passages extended beyond the estate boundaries.
Most had never been mapped.
A maintenance plan from 1948 showed one tunnel leading toward an abandoned monastery in the hills.
The building had burned decades earlier.
Its underground foundation remained.
The brass seal was moved to a federal evidence vault.
Charles called my phone at eleven twenty.
Rebecca appeared on video.
Her wrists were tied to a wooden chair.
She sat inside a room with stone walls and a broken religious mural.
The monastery.
Charles stood behind her.
“Midnight.”
“Bring the seal.”
“No police.”
Rebecca looked at the camera.
“Do not bring it.”
Charles struck the back of her chair.
She nearly fell.
“You have forty minutes.”
The call ended.
Ruiz refused to deliver the real seal.
Federal technicians created a duplicate containing a tracking chip.
The copy would not access the accounts.
But it might survive a quick inspection.
I volunteered to deliver it.
Ruiz rejected the idea immediately.
“He asked for you because he believes he can control you.”
“He asked me because he knows I will come.”
“That does not mean you should.”
“Rebecca risked everything to expose him.”
“She warned us.”
“She saved Julia.”
“I am not leaving her there.”
Ruiz looked at me for a long moment.
Then she placed a bullet-resistant vest beneath my coat.
The monastery stood five miles from the estate.
I drove alone.
Ruiz’s team approached through the hills.
A federal drone hovered beyond the tree line.
Rain moved across the ruined courtyard.
I carried the duplicate seal inside a leather pouch.
Charles waited near the old chapel entrance.
He held a handgun.
“Show me.”
I lifted the seal.
“Rebecca first.”
He smiled.
“You have become predictable.”
“So have you.”
His expression tightened.
Charles searched me for weapons.
He did not find the tracking device sewn into my sleeve.
He led me underground.
Rebecca sat in the same room from the video.
A cable ran from her chair toward a metal box.
An explosive device.
“Put the seal on the table,” Charles said.
I obeyed.
He examined the crest.
For one second, I thought he recognized the duplicate.
Then he placed it inside a portable reader.
The machine flashed red.
INVALID KEY.
Charles’s face changed.
He aimed the gun at Rebecca.
“You brought me a copy.”
“You were never going to release her.”
“No.”
“But now I get to punish both of you.”
A voice came through the corridor.
“Put the gun down.”
Adrian stood at the entrance.
His wounded shoulder was strapped beneath his jacket.
He held a pistol in his left hand.
I stared at him.
He had left the hospital against medical advice.
Charles laughed.
“You followed your wife again.”
Adrian stepped into the room.
“I followed you.”
“You cannot shoot me.”
“Why?”
“Because then you will never know whether your mother helped plan Anna’s death.”
Adrian’s weapon lowered slightly.
Charles saw it.
He always knew which wound to press.
Rebecca shouted, “He is lying.”
Charles grabbed the explosive trigger.
“Drop the gun.”
Adrian obeyed.
The pistol struck the stone floor.
Charles kicked it aside.
“Your entire life, you wanted to believe you were different from me,” he said.
“But you struck Julia.”
“You struck Claire.”
“You carried women into basements.”
“You forged documents.”
“You are not my victim.”
“You are my son.”
Adrian looked toward me.
“I know what I am.”
His voice was quiet.
“That is why I am not asking Claire to forgive me.”
Charles smiled.
“Noble words after getting caught.”
“Yes.”
“Getting caught was the first honest thing that happened to me.”
He moved toward Rebecca.
Charles raised the gun.
Adrian lunged.
The weapon fired.
The bullet struck the wall.
Rebecca’s chair tipped sideways.
I grabbed the explosive cable and pulled it from the metal box.
A timer activated.
Thirty seconds.
Charles struck Adrian’s injured shoulder.
Adrian collapsed.
Ruiz’s team entered the corridor.
Charles grabbed the duplicate seal and ran through a side passage.
I cut Rebecca’s restraints with a piece of broken metal.
The timer reached twenty seconds.
Ruiz shouted for everyone to evacuate.
Adrian could barely stand.
I pulled his uninjured arm across my shoulders.
Rebecca helped from the other side.
We reached the courtyard as the underground room exploded.
Stone and fire burst through the monastery windows.
The ground shook.
The roof collapsed.
Charles was still inside.
For several minutes, officers waited for secondary explosions.
Then the search began.
They found the duplicate seal beneath fallen stones.
They found blood near the side tunnel.
They did not find Charles.
Rebecca stared into the smoke.
“He escaped again.”
Ruiz examined the blood.
“He is injured.”
Adrian was taken back to the hospital.
This time, officers guarded his room.
He would be charged regardless of his cooperation.
Saving us did not erase the assault.
He understood that.
Before the ambulance left, he asked to speak to me.
“I married you knowing my father wanted your property.”
“Yes.”
“I told myself I could protect you afterward.”
“Yes.”
“I was wrong.”
“Yes.”
He looked down.
“I do not know whether I loved you or loved how you made me feel about myself.”
The honesty hurt.
But it also ended something.
“I loved the man I believed you were,” I said.
“I know.”
“That man made promises you were unwilling to keep.”
“I know.”
I removed my wedding ring.
I placed it in his hand.
“This marriage is over.”
Adrian closed his fingers around the ring.
He did not beg.
He did not blame Charles.
He nodded once.
For the first time, he allowed my decision to belong to me.
The next morning, federal investigators accessed the original brass seal.
Offshore accounts revealed more than two hundred and thirty million dollars.
Funds could be traced to stolen homes, fraudulent loans, insurance payments, and dissolved companies.
The money was frozen.
Judge Pierce’s communications connected twelve officials to the Caldwell network.
Arrests began across California.
Vincent Price agreed to cooperate to avoid a life sentence.
He gave Ruiz the location of Charles’s emergency safe house.
It was a farmhouse outside Sacramento.
Agents raided it before dawn.
The house was empty.
But the kitchen table held a recent newspaper.
My photograph appeared on the front page.
A red circle had been drawn around my face.
Beside it was a photograph of my parents’ graves.
Ruiz called me immediately.
“Charles is not trying to escape anymore.”
“What is he doing?”
“He is removing everyone he believes caused the empire to fall.”
A cemetery camera showed a man entering the gates that afternoon.
He wore a maintenance uniform.
He carried a long black case.
My parents were buried in that cemetery.
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And Julia was visiting their graves with me at four o’clock.
Charles knew exactly where we would be.
