Chapter Nine: The buried truth

Ariella sat on the cold marble floor long after the chaos had quieted. Elise’s arms were still around her, but they felt distant—like a barrier, not comfort. Lucien paced the room, his jaw clenched, his white shirt streaked with blood from Mateo’s busted lip. The silence between them was thick, suffocating, like the walls were closing in.

Mateo had been dragged away by Lucien’s private security. No police were called.

And that told her everything.

“This isn’t protection,” Ariella whispered. “It’s a prison.”

Lucien stopped pacing. “I was trying to keep you safe.”

“By lying to me?” Her voice cracked. “You let me believe you were the monster. That you killed my father.”

“I had to,” he said. “It was easier to let you hate me than risk you digging deeper.”

She stood slowly, swaying on unsteady legs. Her cheek still throbbed from Mateo’s slap, but it was nothing compared to the ache inside her chest.

“Elise,” she said, turning to the woman who’d raised her, who held every memory of her childhood. “How much of it was a lie?”

Elise’s eyes glistened. “Not everything. I loved you like my own. But I made a choice the day your father died. I chose silence over truth. For your sake.”

“You should have let me decide that.”

Lucien stepped closer, but she recoiled. “Please don’t,” she said sharply.

“I swear to you, Ariella,” he said, his voice low and rough. “I didn’t know they would go that far. I only wanted to scare him—to push him into selling the shares quietly. But someone else… someone higher up ordered the hit. I found out too late.”

She stared at him in horror. “You’re telling me my father died because of a business deal?”

“It wasn’t just a deal,” Elise whispered. “It was a war between powerful families. And your father was going to expose them. He left behind evidence. Files. Names. A ledger. That’s what Mateo was trying to protect.”

Ariella’s breath caught. “Where is it?”

Lucien looked away.

“Elise?” she turned to the only person who hadn’t lied with cruelty in her eyes.

Elise sighed. “Your father left the files in a safe deposit box under a fake name. I never told you because... if they knew you had access to it, they’d kill you too.”

Ariella clenched her fists. “I’m tired of being shielded. I want to know what my father died for. I want the truth. All of it.”

Lucien’s gaze hardened. “If you go down this path, there’s no turning back. They’ll come for you. They’ll watch your every move. You’ll never sleep soundly again.”

She looked him dead in the eye. “They already took my father. They won’t take my silence too.”

There was a knock at the door.

One of Lucien’s men stepped inside and whispered something into his ear. His face darkened.

“They know,” he muttered. “Mateo escaped in the middle of the transfer. Someone helped him. And now he’s disappeared.”

Ariella’s heart skipped a beat. “He’ll come back for me.”

Lucien nodded grimly. “Or for what your father left behind.”

Elise rose to her feet. “We need to move her.”

“No,” Ariella said. “I’m not running.”

“This isn’t about pride,” Elise snapped, the mask of calm cracking. “It’s survival.”

Lucien looked at Ariella, his voice quieter. “Then we take the fight to them. Together. We open that box.”

Ariella took a slow breath. Her knees still trembled. But her voice didn’t.

“Then we start now.”

Lucien stared at her. For a moment, he looked stunned—not by her bravery, but by the steel in her voice. Like he had finally seen her not as a girl broken by grief, but as a woman ready to reclaim her truth.

“Then we start now,” Ariella repeated, her voice firm despite the storm in her chest.

Lucien nodded once and turned to Elise. “Get the car ready. No guards. No convoy. We go quiet.”

Elise hesitated. “If they’re watching—”

“They already know,” Ariella interrupted, stepping forward. “There’s no hiding anymore. Let them watch.”

Lucien looked back at her with something unreadable in his eyes—equal parts admiration and worry. “You sound like him, you know.”

“My father?”

Lucien nodded. “Stubborn. Righteous. Brave to a fault.”

She swallowed hard. “He died for those things. I won’t let his death be the end of the story.”

Within minutes, they were on the move. The city lights blurred past the tinted windows as the car sped into the night. Elise drove, silent but alert, while Ariella sat in the back beside Lucien, her hands fidgeting in her lap.

Her thoughts were a whirlwind. Her father’s voice echoed faintly in her memories—laughing, teaching, warning. And then Mateo’s rage, the slap, the words: “You were never supposed to find out.”

She clenched her fists tighter.

“What if the box is empty?” she asked.

“It won’t be,” Lucien replied. “Your father wasn’t reckless. If he wanted to hide something from people like us, he would’ve made sure it stayed buried until the right hands opened it.”

“And you think mine are the right ones?” she asked, bitterly.

“I think they’re the only ones that matter now,” he said, softer.

They pulled into an underground garage beneath an old, upscale bank downtown. Elise handed Lucien a small velvet pouch. Inside was a key—gold-rimmed, etched with a symbol Ariella didn’t recognize.

“Your father had connections here,” Elise explained. “He used a false identity. Everything was off the books. No digital trail.”

Lucien took the key and handed it to Ariella. “You open it.”

She stepped out of the car, legs shaky but determined. As they made their way into the building, Lucien’s presence stayed close at her side. Her heart raced—not from fear, but from anticipation. This was it. The moment that could change everything.

They reached a private vault room in the back. The clerk, old and clearly paid for silence, gave a small nod and unlocked the gated hallway without a word.

Ariella stepped inside and slid the key into the box marked Name: Daniel Ross, her father’s chosen alias.

The lock clicked.

She pulled the drawer forward slowly, breath catching as her fingers brushed against the contents.

A stack of sealed envelopes.

A silver flash drive.

A black leather notebook.

She lifted them out one by one, laying them gently on the table. Each item pulsed with a strange weight—like history pressing down on the room.

Lucien stepped forward but didn’t touch anything.

“This is bigger than we thought,” he murmured, scanning the symbols on the notebook’s cover.

Elise reached for one of the envelopes, her fingers trembling. “Your father knew they’d come after you if you ever saw this. But he wanted you to know eventually. When you were strong enough.”

Ariella sat down, opening the leather notebook first. Inside were pages and pages of handwritten notes—records of meetings, payments, names she didn’t recognize, and some she did.

Senators. Judges. CEOs.

And one name repeated over and over again—De Silva.

“Who’s De Silva?” she whispered.

Lucien paled. “The real man behind your father’s murder.”

Ariella blinked. “I thought it was your company?”

Lucien shook his head. “De Silva was a silent investor. A snake. He used our name, made it look like we were the bad guys while he pulled the strings. I found out too late. By the time I tried to stop him, your father was already gone.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” she demanded.

Lucien looked ashamed. “Because I was part of the machine. Even if I didn’t pull the trigger, I greased the wheels. I didn’t know your father had gathered this much proof.”

Elise touched the flash drive. “He must have planned to leak this. Expose the entire web.”

Ariella stared down at the files in her hands. “This… this is why they wanted me out of the way. Why Mateo slapped me, masked and desperate. Why no one wanted me to remember.”

She looked at Lucien.

“Then we burn it all down.”