Chapter 6 - The Last Betrayal
Daniel Baron had grown up like Elias’s younger brother.
Their fathers were brothers.
They attended the same schools.
Spent summers at the same shore house.
When Salvatore died, Daniel stood beside Elias at the funeral.
When Elias woke after the crash, Daniel was one of the first family members beside his hospital bed.
That was why Elias initially refused to believe it.
Then Gabriel opened the financial records.
Daniel had been stealing from Baron Holdings for six years.
Small amounts at first.
Then larger transfers disguised as consulting fees.
Eventually the missing money exceeded twelve million dollars.
“Your father discovered it before he died,” Gabriel said.
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“He planned to.”
But Salvatore died first.
Sebastian discovered Daniel’s theft afterward.
And used it.
Daniel became another compromised piece in Sebastian’s network.
But when Sebastian decided to cancel the plan to sabotage Elias’s vehicle, Daniel faced a problem.
If Elias remained powerful and eventually discovered the missing money, Daniel would lose everything.
So Daniel reactivated the sabotage.
The bullets fired at Elias’s vehicle were intended as intimidation.
Daniel turned intimidation into attempted murder.
“Where is he?” Elias asked.
Gabriel placed a phone on the table.
“We found his car at the airport.”
“Flight?”
“None booked under his name.”
Clara entered carrying coffee.
She had barely slept in four days.
Neither had Elias.
She placed a cup near him.
“You need to eat.”
“Later.”
“That’s what you said six hours ago.”
Gabriel almost smiled.
Elias noticed.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Say it.”
“It’s simply refreshing to see someone who isn’t frightened of you.”
Clara folded her arms.
“Should I be?”
Gabriel looked at Elias.
“No.”
For the first time in days, Elias almost laughed.
Then his phone rang.
Daniel.
Elias answered.
“Where are you?”
His cousin sounded exhausted.
“You know.”
“I know enough.”
“Sebastian used me.”
“You chose.”
“He would’ve destroyed me.”
“So you tried to destroy me first.”
Silence.
“I didn’t know you’d end up paralyzed.”
“You sabotaged a car traveling seventy miles an hour.”
“I panicked.”
“For eighteen months?”
Daniel began crying.
Elias felt nothing.
“Where are you?”
“At Uncle Sal’s house.”
Elias froze.
Salvatore’s old house had remained empty since his death.
“Why?”
“There’s something here you need to see.”
Elias looked at Gabriel.
“Police?”
“No.”
“If you bring them, I burn everything.”
“What everything?”
“Your father’s real ledger.”
The line went dead.
Gabriel shook his head.
“Trap.”
“Obviously.”
“You’re not going.”
Clara looked at him.
Elias raised an eyebrow.
“You too?”
“Yes.”
“I’m beginning to miss when people feared me.”
“No, you aren’t.”
He looked at her.
She was right.
That realization surprised him.
They contacted investigators anyway.
Nobody intended to honor Daniel’s conditions.
Salvatore’s house stood outside the city behind old stone walls and neglected gardens.
Elias had not entered it since the funeral.
Daniel waited in the study.
No weapon.
No fire.
Just a broken man sitting beside a cardboard box.
“You brought Clara,” Daniel said.
Elias looked at him.
“You know her?”
“Everyone knows her now.”
Investigators had not yet made the case public, but rumors were spreading.
Daniel pushed the box forward.
“Uncle Sal kept copies.”
Inside were ledgers documenting years of Sebastian’s operations.
Enough evidence to support cases far beyond Victor Ashford.
Daniel looked at Elias.
“I can testify.”
“You will.”
“I want protection.”
“That’s between you and prosecutors.”
Daniel stared at him.
“You really changed.”
Elias’s expression hardened.
“You made sure of it.”
“I’m sorry.”
Elias looked at his cousin.
There had been a time when those words might have mattered.
Now they were simply words.
“You sat beside my hospital bed.”
Daniel cried openly.
“I know.”
“You watched me learn how to transfer into this chair.”
“I know.”
“You told me we’d find whoever did it.”
“I know.”
“And every time I blamed myself for making enemies, you let me.”
Daniel lowered his head.
Elias’s voice remained quiet.
“That is the part I won’t forgive.”
Police entered moments later.
Daniel surrendered.
There was no dramatic chase.
No gunfire.
No final act of violence.
Only handcuffs clicking around the wrists of someone Elias once considered family.
Afterward, Elias remained alone in Salvatore’s study.
Clara waited near the doorway.
“Want me to leave?”
“No.”
She stayed.
Elias looked around the room.
“My whole life, I thought power meant nobody could put you in a position you didn’t choose.”
Clara leaned against the desk.
“And now?”
“Now I think that’s impossible.”
He looked at his wheelchair.
“Sometimes life chooses the position.”
Clara waited.
“You only get to choose what kind of person occupies it.”
She smiled.
“That sounds annoyingly healthy.”
“Don’t tell anyone.”
They both laughed quietly.
It was the first uncomplicated sound Elias had made in days.
Then Clara noticed an envelope beneath Salvatore’s desk blotter.
It had apparently been hidden there for years.
Elias opened it.
Inside was a letter addressed to him.
Not about Sebastian.
Not about business.
About fear.
Salvatore wrote that his greatest regret was teaching Elias never to show where he hurt.
Pain hidden too long becomes a room with no doors.
Elias read that sentence twice.
The letter continued.
Trust carefully, son. But trust someone. A man who needs nobody eventually has nobody.
Elias lowered the paper.
Clara pretended to study the bookshelf.
“You read that?”
“No.”
“You’re terrible at lying.”
“I’m a former doctor. We call it protecting confidentiality.”
He smiled.
Then he looked at her.
“What happens when this is over?”
“To Sebastian?”
“To you.”
Clara’s smile disappeared.
“My career is still gone.”
“Victor confessed.”
“That doesn’t automatically restore five years.”
“No.”
“But it helps.”
She nodded.
“The medical board will review everything.”
“And if they restore your license?”
“I don’t know.”
Elias looked at her.
“You should.”
“Why?”
“Because the woman who found me in a cemetery diagnosed a pulmonary embolism with a flashlight and two questions.”
“More than two.”
“Always correcting me.”
“Somebody should.”
Their eyes met.
Something had been developing between them quietly, underneath investigations and old betrayals.
Neither named it.
Not yet.
Clara broke eye contact first.
“There’s another problem.”
“What?”
“Margot.”
Elias’s expression changed.
Margot had disappeared after giving investigators her statement.
Not physically.
Emotionally.
She had stopped calling.
Stopped asking about the engagement.
Stopped defending herself.
Elias found her the next morning at the cemetery.
Standing beside Salvatore’s grave.
Rain had finally stopped.
Margot looked at him.
“I came to apologize.”
“You already did.”
“Not properly.”
She looked toward the grave.
“I loved you, Elias.”
He believed that too.
“But when loving you became difficult,” she continued, “I discovered I wasn’t the person I thought I was.”
Elias said nothing.
“I left you when you needed me.”
“Yes.”
“I can’t undo that.”
“No.”
Margot wiped away a tear.
“Are we finished?”
Elias looked at the woman he had planned to marry.
Four years deserved honesty.
“Yes.”
Margot nodded.
It hurt her.
It hurt him too.
But some endings were not failures.
Sometimes they were simply truth arriving late.
She removed her engagement ring.
Elias shook his head.
“Keep it.”
“I can’t.”
“Sell it. Give the money to Clara’s clinic.”
Margot almost smiled.
“That sounds like something your father might have done.”
“Maybe I’m finally learning something from him.”
Margot placed the ring back into her pocket.
Then she walked away.
This time Elias watched her leave without chasing after her.
He looked at Salvatore’s grave.
“You were right about one thing, old man.”
A voice behind him answered.
“Only one?”
Elias turned.
Clara stood several feet away holding two coffees.
“You following me?”
“No.”
She handed him one.
“My mother is buried three rows over, remember?”
He did.
That was how everything had begun.
Elias looked at the path where his wheelchair had become trapped in the mud days earlier.
It was dry now.
Clear.
Passable.
But the story was not finished.
Because Clara’s phone rang.
She answered.
Her face changed.
“What happened?” Elias asked.
She slowly lowered the phone.
“That was the medical board.”
“And?”
“They’ve completed the emergency review of Victor’s confession.”
Elias waited.
Clara’s eyes filled.
“They want me in front of the board tomorrow morning.”
For five years, Clara Dunn had lived as the doctor who had been punished for telling the truth.
Tomorrow, she would finally learn whether the truth had arrived in time to give her back the life stolen from her.
And Elias knew exactly where he intended to be when she heard the answer.
May you like
Beside her.
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