Chapter 16 - PART TWO
The interior of the subterranean garage smelled of stale exhaust and damp concrete as Adrien carefully lifted the vintage cassette tape from the bed of white roses. The white petals looked pristine against the dark rubber lining of the trunk—a deliberate, mocking gesture left by someone who had unfettered access to our most secure facilities.
"Don't touch it," Adrien warned, pulling a micro-scanner from his tactical vest and passing it over the plastic casing of the tape. "Could be rigged with a proximity charge or a chemical agent."
"It’s not a bomb," I said quietly, staring down at my grandfather's handwriting. "It's an invitation."
Adrien’s scanner flashed green. No explosives, no biological residue. Just magnetic tape containing twenty-year-old secrets that were apparently ready to detonate.
"Julian," Adrien spoke into his comms, sliding the tape into a portable player he carried in his tactical pack. "Patch this audio feed directly into my earpiece and route it to the secure terminal. Let's hear what the ghost has to say."
He pressed play.
For a moment, only harsh static hissed through the small speaker. Then, a heavy, familiar cough echoed through the garage. It wasn't my father’s voice. It wasn't Robert Blake's.
It was a voice I had only ever heard in old newspaper archives and historical crime documentaries.
"Adrien," Carlo Viscari’s raspy, authoritative voice boomed through the audio feed, sending a shiver straight down my spine. "If you’re hearing this, it means Robert finally fell for the trap we laid for him back in '98. But it also means you’re still wasting your time playing knight in shining armor for the Hart girl."
I gasped, taking an involuntary step back. Adrien’s jaw tightened so hard I thought the bone might fracture.
"Your mother didn't run away from me because I wanted her dead," Carlo’s recorded voice continued, dripping with cynical amusement. "She ran because she found out Robert Blake was embezzling from both our syndicate and the federal judiciary simultaneously. I helped her fake her death so Robert wouldn't put a bullet in her brain before she could testify against him in front of the grand jury that never happened. And Thomas Hart? Loyal insurance man? No. Thomas was my primary financial cleaner for thirty years."
The world seemed to tilt sideways. I grabbed the edge of the car door to keep my balance.
"Lies," I whispered, shaking my head. "That's a lie. My father was a good man."
"And as for you, my ambitious son," Carlo’s voice sneered through the tape. "If you want the rest of the offshore accounts—the real empire—you and little Miss Hart need to come to the old family estate in the Catskills before midnight. Because by tomorrow morning, the entire property goes up in flames. Along with the last surviving member of the Viscari bloodline."
The tape clicked off with a sharp snap.
Silence descended on the garage once more, heavier and more suffocating than before.
Adrien stood motionless, staring at the concrete floor. The father he had mourned, the father he had hated, the father whose brutal legacy he had spent a decade trying to dismantle—was apparently alive and waiting for us in the mountains.
"It's a trap," Viktor stated flatly, stepping out from the shadows near the exit ramp. "Carlo Viscari hasn't been seen in fifteen years. If he’s alive, he’s paranoid, armed, and surrounded by loyalists who didn't transfer to the new regime."
"I know it's a trap," Adrien said, his voice terrifyingly calm as he looked up at me. He reached out, gently taking my hand. "We don't have to go, Lena. We can get on a plane with your mother this afternoon and disappear to Europe where none of them can ever touch us again."
I looked at the cassette tape resting in the open trunk. I thought about my father, about the lies I had lived, about the mother who had spent twenty years hiding in fear.
"If we run now," I said softly, squeezing Adrien's hand, "it never ends. He wants us in the Catskills? Then we go to the Catskills."
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Adrien stared at me for a long moment, a slow, fierce pride shining in his dark eyes. He nodded once.
"Pack your gear," Adrien told Viktor. "We're going hunting for ghosts."
