Chapter 35 - Unburied Secrets
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I scrambled out of bed, wrapping a silk robe around myself, and knelt beside Ethan on the mattress. "His casket? Ethan, how could someone have his watch?!"
Ethan picked up the handwritten note with shaking fingers.
The script was elegant, feminine, and terrifyingly precise.
My dearest Ethan, the note read. You thought you destroyed my network when you put Elizabeth in prison. But Elizabeth was merely a child playing with my toys. Your father didn't die in an accident, my boy. And his casket has been empty for twenty years. Welcome to the real family business. Come to Geneva... if you want to meet your mother.
The paper slipped from Ethan's fingers, fluttering down onto the bed sheets.
I stared at the words in absolute horror, my mind spinning into a vortex of confusion and dread. "Your mother? But... Ethan, you said your mother died twenty years ago! You said she fled to Switzerland!"
"She did," Ethan stammered, his eyes wide with shock, looking like a lost child for the first time since I had met him. "I buried her ashes myself in Zurich..."
"Then who wrote this note?" I whispered, my voice trembling violently.
Before Ethan could answer, his encrypted satellite phone rang on the nightstand.
He picked it up, his hand shaking so badly he nearly dropped the device. He pressed it to his ear. "Speak."
"Ethan," Lucas’s frantic voice echoed through the speaker. "We have a emergency situation at the Carter Vault in New York."
"What happened?" Ethan demanded, forcing his tone to harden.
"Someone breached the underground mausoleum three hours ago," Lucas reported, his voice filled with unbelievable dread. "They didn't steal anything, Ethan... they opened your parents' tombs."
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Ethan gripped the phone until his knuckles turned blue. "And?"
"They were both empty, Ethan," Lucas whispered. "Neither of your parents ever died."
