Chapter 3 - THE FIRE WASN’T AN ACCIDENT
I read the message twice.
ASK MATTHEW WHO STARTED THE FIRE.
The words seemed to pulse on the screen.
Matthew was still watching me.
“Who texted you?”
I locked the phone.
“Nobody.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Lie badly.”
I laughed once.
There was nothing funny in it.
“You disappear for eighteen years, walk into my diner with two hired gorillas, say my dead name out loud, and suddenly you’re offended because I’m not being honest?”
His jaw tightened.
“I didn’t disappear.”
“That’s exactly what you did.”
“I was fourteen.”
“And I was eight.”
That stopped him.
Around us, the diner looked like a bomb had gone off.
Glass covered three booths.
One customer had a cut across his forehead. Carla was helping him with a first-aid kit while our cook, Luis, called 911.
Sirens already echoed somewhere in the distance.
That created a new problem.
Police.
Names.
Statements.
Questions.
I had survived eighteen years because I avoided all three.
I untied my apron.
Matthew noticed.
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“No.”
I looked at him.
He spoke again.
“You can’t go home.”
“You don’t get to tell me where I can go.”
“If they know your apartment—”
My face gave me away.
His expression sharpened.
“They contacted you.”
I hated that he could still read me.
Even after all these years.
“They have my address.”
Matthew cursed.
Then he turned toward Brennan.
“Car.”
Brennan touched the side of his bruised neck.
“Cops will be here in two minutes.”
“Then we leave in one.”
I headed toward the kitchen.
Matthew caught up.
“You’re coming with me.”
I stopped.
“Try grabbing my wrist.”
He almost smiled.
Almost.
Then he looked serious again.
“Whoever fired through that window knew exactly where you were standing. Whoever texted you knows your address. If you walk outside alone, you may not reach sunrise.”
“I’ve survived worse.”
“I know.”
His voice softened.
“That’s what scares me.”
I wanted to hate that sentence.
Instead, it hurt.
Luis pushed through the swinging door.
“Emily, police are on the way.”
“I know.”
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
He stared at the broken glass.
“No, you’re not.”
He was right.
But “fine” had never meant fine.
It meant alive enough to keep moving.
I entered the employee hallway and opened my locker.
Inside was my emergency bag.
Cash.
Passport under another name.
Burner phone.
Sweatshirt.
Small first-aid kit.
And a black metal box no bigger than a paperback novel.
Matthew appeared in the doorway.
His eyes went to the bag.
“You keep a go-bag at work?”
“I keep one everywhere.”
“Who taught you that?”
I zipped it.
“The woman who saved me.”
“Helen Shaw.”
My hand froze.
I turned slowly.
“How do you know that name?”
Matthew looked tired.
For the first time, he looked older than the boy I remembered.
“I found her.”
“When?”
“Ten years ago.”
“You’re lying.”
“I found records. Rental agreements under fake identities. School enrollment papers. Cash withdrawals. She moved you across four states.”
My pulse quickened.
“You were tracking us?”
“I was looking for you.”
“Helen said the Valentines wanted me dead.”
Pain crossed his face again.
“Helen told you that?”
“She told me enough.”
“Apparently not.”
I stepped closer.
“She said my father ordered the fire.”
Matthew went completely still.
There.
That reaction.
The text message had not been random.
He knew something.
“Who started it?” I asked.
“Not here.”
“Wrong answer.”
“Evie—”
“Who started the fire?”
He looked toward the kitchen.
Sirens were louder now.
“Come with me and I’ll tell you everything I know.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“You shouldn’t.”
That answer surprised me.
He continued.
“You shouldn’t trust me. You shouldn’t trust anyone with the Valentine name. But you need information, and I need you alive long enough to hear it.”
Red and blue lights flashed against the broken windows.
Matthew looked toward the front entrance.
“Thirty seconds.”
I should have stayed.
I should have told the police everything.
But what exactly was everything?
That I had been officially dead for eighteen years?
That Chicago’s most feared criminal was my brother?
That someone had just tried to assassinate me after recognizing a childhood scar?
Police reports created paper.
Paper created trails.
Trails created graves.
Helen had taught me that.
I followed Matthew through the kitchen.
Brennan had already opened the rear door.
Cold air rushed inside.
A black SUV idled in the alley.
I stopped.
“I’m not getting in that.”
Matthew looked over his shoulder.
“You’d rather wait for the shooter?”
“Yes.”
“Stubborn.”
“You remember.”
A strange sadness passed through his face.
“I remember everything.”
That sentence almost made me turn around.
Instead, I climbed into the SUV.
Matthew sat opposite me.
Brennan drove.
The other guard—whose name turned out to be Colin—rode shotgun with an ice pack pressed against his jaw.
Nobody spoke for the first five blocks.
Then Matthew handed me his phone.
A photograph filled the screen.
My mother.
Isabelle Valentine.
She stood on the terrace of our Lake Forest house wearing a white summer dress.
Beside her was my father, Richard Valentine.
Behind them stood Matthew at thirteen.
And me.
Seven years old.
Holding a red balloon.
My chest tightened.
“I don’t want this.”
“You need to see the date.”
I looked.
June 12, 2008.
Four months before the fire.
Matthew swiped.
Another photograph.
My mother leaving a bank.
Another.
My mother speaking to a man I did not recognize.
Another.
The same man entering our house through the service gate.
“Who is he?”
“Federal prosecutor.”
I looked up.
“What?”
“His name was Daniel Mercer. He was building a case against Father.”
The SUV turned onto Lower Wacker.
Dark concrete swallowed us.
Matthew continued.
“Mother was helping him.”
I stared at him.
“My mother was working with the government?”
“She was trying to get us out.”
Us.
The word felt dangerous.
“She found out what Father’s organization really was,” Matthew said. “Money laundering. Extortion. Judges on payroll. Police commanders. Construction contracts. Unions. Drugs later, though she didn’t know that part at first.”
I swallowed.
“And the fire?”
“Three days before it happened, Mother told me we were leaving.”
I remembered something.
A suitcase.
Blue.
Hidden behind her dresses.
I had thought we were going on vacation.
“She said not to tell Father,” Matthew continued. “The night of the fire, she woke me around midnight. She told me to get you from your room and meet her downstairs.”
“You didn’t.”
His face hardened with self-hatred.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Father stopped me.”
I felt cold.
“He knew?”
“He knew everything.”
The car seemed too small.
“What did he do?”
Matthew stared at his hands.
“I heard you screaming upstairs. I tried to run to you. Father’s men held me.”
My mouth went dry.
“He made you watch?”
Matthew nodded once.
“The east wing was already burning.”
I saw it.
Smoke.
Heat.
Helen breaking a basement window.
My mother shouting somewhere above us.
I had blocked most of it.
But not all.
“Father told me Mother had betrayed the family,” Matthew said. “He said betrayal required consequences.”
“You’re saying he started the fire.”
“Yes.”
The word landed like a bullet.
I looked away.
Chicago lights slid across the windows.
My father.
The man whose photograph had once sat beside my bed.
The man who taught me to ride a bicycle.
The man who called me Princess.
He had tried to burn me alive.
“Did Mother die?”
Matthew didn’t answer.
I looked back.
“Did she?”
“We thought so.”
“Thought?”
His eyes met mine.
“The body buried beside your empty coffin wasn’t hers.”
Every sound inside the SUV disappeared.
“What?”
“DNA testing at the time was manipulated.”
“By whom?”
“Father.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t know until six months ago.”
I leaned forward.
“What happened six months ago?”
Matthew reached inside his coat.
I tensed.
He withdrew an envelope.
Old.
Yellowed.
My name was written across the front.
Not Emily.
Evelyn.
The handwriting belonged to my mother.
I knew it instantly.
My hands began to shake.
“Where did you get that?”
“It arrived at my house.”
“When?”
“February seventeenth.”
“Who sent it?”
“No return address.”
He handed it to me.
I stared at the sealed edge.
“You opened it?”
“No.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because it says Evelyn.”
Something inside me broke a little.
I opened the envelope.
One page.
My mother’s handwriting.
Evie,
If this reaches you, then Matthew finally found you, or someone found him first.
Do not trust your father.
Do not trust the police.
And until Matthew tells you what happened in the basement, do not trust him either.
My eyes lifted.
Matthew had gone pale.
I kept reading.
There is something hidden beneath the old house that Richard has spent eighteen years trying to find.
You are the only person who can open it.
The key was never metal.
The key is what I taught you to remember.
I love you more than every mistake I ever made.
Mom.
I stared at the page.
Then at Matthew.
“What happened in the basement?”
His silence was answer enough.
“Tell me.”
He looked toward Brennan.
“Not while we’re moving.”
I grabbed Matthew by the coat.
Colin turned.
Brennan looked in the mirror.
Matthew raised one hand.
Nobody interfered.
“What happened in the basement?”
He whispered, “I left you there.”
My grip tightened.
“What?”
“The night of the fire.”
His eyes glistened.
“I knew about the tunnel.”
Images flashed.
Brick walls.
Smoke.
A metal door.
Helen’s hands.
“Mother showed me weeks earlier,” Matthew said. “She told me if anything happened, I was supposed to take you through the basement and run.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because Father told me if I helped you escape, he’d kill Mother.”
I released him.
“So you chose her.”
“I was fourteen.”
“So was I supposed to burn?”
“No!”
His voice filled the SUV.
Then dropped.
“No.”
He looked away.
“I froze.”
I stared at him.
Eighteen years of loneliness rose inside me like floodwater.
Every fostered identity.
Every locked door.
Every birthday celebrated under a fake name.
Every nightmare.
“You left me.”
“Yes.”
“And now you want forgiveness?”
“No.”
He looked back at me.
“I want you alive.”
The SUV suddenly swerved.
Brennan cursed.
Headlights appeared behind us.
Two motorcycles.
Black helmets.
No plates.
Matthew looked back.
“Hold on.”
A rider raised one hand.
Gun.
The rear window exploded.
I dropped to the floor.
Brennan accelerated.
Colin pulled a pistol.
Shots echoed through Lower Wacker.
Matthew covered me with his body.
I shoved him off.
“I can protect myself.”
“I noticed.”
Another bullet struck the SUV.
Then Brennan shouted.
“Roadblock!”
Ahead of us, two black vans blocked the tunnel.
Armed men stepped out.
Matthew’s face changed.
He reached beneath the seat and pulled out a handgun.
“Stay behind me.”
I looked at the gun.
Then at the vans.
Then at the old black metal box inside my emergency bag.
Helen had told me never to open it unless the Valentines found me.
I had carried it for eight years.
Maybe this qualified.
I unlocked the box.
Inside was a photograph, a small cassette recorder, and one folded document.
Matthew looked down.
His face drained of color.
“What?”
I unfolded the document.
It was a birth certificate.
My birth certificate.
But the father’s name was not Richard Valentine.
It was Daniel Mercer.
The federal prosecutor from Matthew’s photographs.
And before I could speak, one of the men outside the SUV shouted through a loudspeaker.
“EVELYN MERCER!”
Matthew stared at me.
The gun in his hand lowered.
May you like
The loudspeaker crackled again.
“YOUR REAL FATHER SENT US.”
