Chapter 5 – THE CHILD’S DRAWING

Leo screamed and buried his face in my neck.

I backed away, shielding my son with my body, putting myself between Daniel and Margaret.

“Daniel, put it down!” Margaret cried, tears spilling down her cheeks. “You’ve done enough damage!”

Daniel’s hand shook, the barrel of the gun wavering between me and his mother.

“I did everything for this family!” Daniel shouted, his voice cracking. “Gabriel got the power, Gabriel got the respect! I was the one fixing Dad’s mistakes! Give me the key, Claire.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied, closing my fist tighter around the small silver key.

“Don’t lie to me!” He took a step closer. “Isabella told me about the box. She found the bank receipts in Dad’s old journals. That box contains the bearer bonds. Fifty million dollars.”

My breath caught. Fifty million?

“Daniel, you can’t do this,” I pleaded, my voice trembling. “Leo is just a little boy. Please.”

Daniel looked at Leo. For a fraction of a second, something like guilt flashed in his eyes. He noticed a piece of paper on the floor next to Margaret’s chair.

It was a crayon drawing Leo had made earlier that afternoon while I was cleaning.

Daniel looked down at it. It was a drawing of a house, a smiling woman, a little boy, and an older woman holding a walking cane.

Margaret.

“He drew you,” Daniel whispered to Margaret, his voice breaking. “He barely knows you, and he drew you as family. I spent forty years trying to make you proud, and you look at me like a monster.”

“You made yourself a monster, Daniel,” Margaret said firmly, though her hands were shaking. “Your father loved you. But he couldn’t trust you. That’s why he hid the bonds.”

Daniel’s face hardened. The guilt vanished, replaced by desperate rage.

“Give me the key. Now.” He aimed the gun directly at my chest.

I slowly opened my hand. The silver key gleamed in the dim light of the bedroom.

“Take it,” I whispered. “Just let us go.”

Daniel reached out and snatched the key from my palm.

“Nobody is leaving until I clear out that box,” he sneered.

He backed toward the door, keeping the gun raised. He reached blindly behind him for the doorknob.

He turned it. Pulled.

The door didn’t open.

Daniel frowned. He pulled harder.

It was locked from the outside.

Suddenly, a voice came through the heavy oak door. Calm. Cold. Terrifying.

“Did you really think I didn’t have cameras in my own hallway, Daniel?”

It was Gabriel.

Daniel panicked. He pointed the gun at the door. “Back off, Gabriel! I have them! I have Claire and the kid!”

“Look out the window, Daniel,” Gabriel’s voice echoed through the wood.

Daniel slowly backed toward the massive bedroom window and glanced outside.

His face went ashen.

Down in the driveway, Isabella was pinned against the hood of a black SUV, surrounded by Gabriel’s men. One of the men was holding the medical lockbox.

“I have the will,” Gabriel said from the other side of the door. “And I have your fiancée. The game is over.”

Daniel dropped the gun. It hit the carpet with a dull thud.

He fell to his knees, burying his face in his hands.

The door unlocked and swung open. Gabriel walked in, his dark eyes sweeping over us to ensure we were safe, before settling on his brother.

“Take him,” Gabriel ordered the guards behind him.

As they dragged a sobbing Daniel out of the room, Gabriel walked over to me.

He looked at the key that had fallen from Daniel’s hands to the floor.

Gabriel picked it up. He looked at Margaret, then at me.

“Tomorrow,” Gabriel said quietly, “we go to the bank. We find out exactly what my father left behind.”

He knelt down and picked up Leo’s crayon drawing.

Gabriel smiled softly at my son.

“I think it’s time we add someone to this picture, don’t you?” Gabriel asked.

Leo peeked out from behind my leg. “Who?”

Gabriel tapped his own chest. “Uncle Gabriel.”

Leo smiled.

But as Gabriel stood up to hand the drawing back to me, the paper slipped.

It flipped over, revealing the back of the page.

Leo had drawn on a piece of scrap paper he’d found in Daniel’s office.

Printed on the back was a medical lab logo.

And in bold, black letters across the top, it read:

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