Chapter 4 - THE DEAD MAN'S MESSAGE
Nate watched the news footage without blinking.
The recovered vehicle belonged to Walter's private security company. Police had cordoned off the road, and divers were searching the river beneath the bridge.
The reporter described the incident as a possible assassination connected to organized crime.
Hannah's fingers tightened around her baby's blanket.
“Is that really your father's car?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Did he know you were coming here?”
Nate looked at the transmitter in his hand.
“I don't know.”
“That's the problem, Nate. You never know anything until someone else is already bleeding.”
He accepted the accusation without defending himself.
Then he stepped into the corridor and made a call.
Hannah couldn't hear the entire conversation, but she caught enough to understand that Nate had ordered his private security team to locate Walter and secure every known Blackwood property.
She pressed the call button beside her bed.
A nurse entered.
“Could you ask Dr. Caldwell to come back?”
The nurse nodded.
Hannah looked at the sleeping newborn. His breathing was steadier now, but the doctor had warned that he needed careful monitoring.
She could not afford to run blindly from one dangerous place to another.
When Ethan returned, Hannah showed him the news.
“Can you verify whether Walter's body was recovered?”
“Not from here.”
“Then we assume he's alive until we have proof.”
Ethan studied her. “You don't trust Nate.”
“I don't trust anyone who has more to lose from the truth than I do.”
A quiet knock sounded at the door.
Rosa entered carrying a canvas bag.
“I found something in the ambulance,” she said.
Inside the bag was a small silver phone, a set of keys, and an envelope bearing Walter's initials.
Hannah opened the envelope.
The note contained only one sentence.
If Margaret knows where you are, she already knows where I am.
Below it was an address in Brooklyn and a time: 3:15 a.m.
“It's a trap,” Nate said from the doorway.
Hannah turned.
“How long have you been listening?”
“Long enough to know you shouldn't go.”
“You don't get to decide where I go.”
“I am trying to keep you alive.”
“You tried that last night by staying in a hotel.”
Nate lowered his head.
“I deserve every word.”
“Stop telling me what you deserve. Tell me what you know.”
He glanced at Ethan and Rosa before answering.
“Julian has been moving money out of several family accounts. I discovered the transfers three days ago. I confronted him yesterday, and he told me there was a threat against our business.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I wanted to.”
“Because believing him was easier than questioning the man who has run your life since you were a child.”
Nate's jaw tightened.
“My father put Julian in charge when I was twenty-two. He taught me how to manage the business. He handled the things I didn't want to see.”
“Like what?”
Nate's eyes met hers.
“The bodies.”
Hannah went still.
He explained that Julian had spent decades making problems disappear for the Blackwood organization. Sometimes that meant bribing officials. Sometimes it meant silencing witnesses. Nate had inherited the system without ever asking how many innocent people it had destroyed.
“I told myself I was different,” he said. “I kept the violence away from the company, away from you.”
“But you kept the people who committed it.”
“Yes.”
The admission was quiet, and for once he didn't try to soften it.
Hannah looked at the envelope again.
“We're going to Brooklyn.”
“No.”
She held his gaze.
“Then you can stay here.”
Nate's face tightened, but he stepped aside.
Ethan objected to moving Hannah so soon after delivery. After checking her condition, he agreed only if she remained under medical supervision and the baby traveled with oxygen and an emergency kit.
Rosa arranged a vehicle that wasn't registered to Blackwood Holdings.
Nate insisted on coming.
Hannah didn't agree to forgive him. She simply understood that he might be useful.
They left before dawn.
The address led to a narrow building between a closed bakery and an auto repair shop. The windows were dark, and a single light glowed above the rear entrance.
Nate went in first.
The room beyond smelled of dust and old coffee. A desk stood beside a wall covered in maps, photographs, and handwritten notes.
Walter was alive.
He sat in a chair with a bandage wrapped around his forehead. One arm rested in a sling, and his overcoat was torn.
“You look terrible,” Nate said.
Walter gave a humorless laugh.
“You look like a man who spent the night making the worst decision of his life.”
Nate accepted the blow.
“Where's the body?”
“Someone else's driver. They dressed him in my coat and sent the vehicle into the river.”
Hannah entered with Ethan pushing her wheelchair.
Walter immediately looked toward the baby.
“Is he all right?”
“He's stable,” Ethan answered.
Walter nodded, visibly relieved.
Nate stepped toward his father.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because you would have told Julian.”
“I would never betray my own son.”
“You already did. You just didn't know it.”
Walter reached into a drawer and removed a thick file.
Inside were copies of bank transfers, medical authorizations, security reports, and photographs of Margaret meeting Julian in private.
The final page contained a handwritten note.
THE CHILD IS THE KEY. THE MOTHER IS THE WITNESS. REMOVE BOTH BEFORE THE TRUST ACTIVATES.
Hannah read it twice.
“What trust?”
Walter looked at Nate.
“Your grandmother's estate. The money was placed in a protected trust decades ago. It becomes accessible only when the first legitimate child of the Blackwood line is born and registered.”
Nate frowned.
“I thought the estate had already been distributed.”
“Most of it was. But there is another account. One large enough to destroy the balance of power in this family.”
Hannah's stomach tightened.
“So they wanted our son dead because of money?”
“Not only money,” Walter said. “The trust contains evidence of what this family did to secure its empire. Names, payments, recordings. If the child triggers its release, people who have spent decades protected by the Blackwoods will fall.”
Nate stared at the file.
“Then why not simply stop the trust?”
“Because your grandmother anticipated that. She made the conditions irrevocable.”
Hannah looked at the final page.
“Who can activate it?”
Walter hesitated.
“Your son. Through a legal registration that requires the biological mother's signature.”
The room fell silent.
Hannah felt the pieces shift into place.
Someone had not merely wanted to frighten her away.
They had needed her alive long enough to sign something—or dead before she could.
A phone rang on the desk.
Walter answered.
His expression changed as he listened.
Then he turned toward Hannah.
“Margaret has called a family meeting at the estate. She's telling everyone you're dead.”
Nate stood abruptly.
“Then we'll go there and expose her.”
Walter shook his head.
“That's what she wants.”
He opened another file and slid a photograph across the desk.
It showed Celeste Monroe entering the Blackwood estate at midnight.
Behind her walked a little girl wearing a red coat.
Hannah stared at the child's face.
May you like
It looked unmistakably like Nate.
And the date printed on the photograph was seven months before Hannah's baby was conceived.
