Chapter 6: The Man Who Came Back from the Dead

“Alexander Cross is dead.”

Damien's voice was cold, but I barely heard him.

I was staring at the photograph on my phone, at the familiar face of a man whose funeral had dominated the news three years ago. The photograph showed him standing outside my father's house, his dark coat buttoned to the throat, his expression unchanged by time.

It could have been an old photograph.

It could have been a cruel trick.

But the message attached to it had arrived minutes ago, and the person who sent it knew where I was.

“Show me,” Damien demanded.

I pulled the phone away.

“First, tell me why your father's face is suddenly appearing in photographs taken outside my family home.”

His eyes narrowed. “Serena, this isn't the time to play games.”

“Neither is this.”

I held the phone toward him.

The moment he saw the image, every trace of colour seemed to drain from his face.

For the first time since our marriage, Damien Cross looked genuinely shaken.

He took the phone from me and enlarged the photograph. His gaze moved over the background, the gate, the house number, and finally the man standing in the shadows.

“Where did you get this?”

“An unknown number sent it.”

“When?”

“Just now.”

He checked the message details, then called someone.

“Get me the original security footage from Vale House. Every camera. Every angle. I want the last forty-eight hours.”

He ended the call and immediately made another.

“Seal the estate. Nobody enters or leaves without my approval.”

I folded my arms. “You're acting as if you believe it's really him.”

Damien stared at the photograph.

“I watched them lower my father's coffin into the ground.”

“That doesn't answer my question.”

“No,” he said quietly. “It doesn't.”

He returned my phone.

“Did the sender write anything else?”

I hesitated.

There had been another message beneath the photograph. I hadn't shown it to him because I didn't know whether I could trust him with it.

But the words had been troubling me since they appeared.

Ask Damien why his father's coffin was never opened.

I watched his face as I turned the screen toward him.

He read the message once.

Then again.

His fingers tightened around the phone.

“What does it mean?” I asked.

He said nothing.

“Damien.”

“The coffin was sealed.”

“Why?”

“According to the official report, my father's body had been badly damaged in the incident that killed him. The family was advised against an open-casket funeral.”

“And you accepted that explanation?”

“I was twenty-eight, Serena. My father was dead, and the people around me told me what had happened.”

“Did you see his body?”

His silence answered before he did.

“No.”

I felt a chill move through me.

Three years of hatred. Three years of revenge. A marriage built on a death that neither of us had properly questioned.

What if the foundation of Damien's entire empire was a lie?

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“Find the person who sent that photograph.”

“And my sister?”

His eyes returned to mine.

“We find Isabella, too.”

For a brief moment, something resembling an alliance formed between us.

Then Damien's phone rang.

He answered, listened, and his expression hardened.

“Repeat that.”

A pause.

“Are you certain?”

He ended the call.

“What happened?” I asked.

“The security team reviewed the footage from your father's house.”

“And?”

“There's no one at the gate.”

I frowned. “But the photograph—”

“Was taken outside the gate, according to the image. The camera footage shows no vehicle, no visitor, and no one approaching the property during the period in question.”

“Could the cameras have been tampered with?”

“Yes.”

“Then the photograph might be genuine.”

“Or someone wants us to believe it is.”

He picked up his jacket.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“To your father's house.”

“I'm coming.”

“No.”

I stepped directly into his path.

“You don't get to investigate my family while leaving me behind.”

“This could be dangerous.”

“My sister disappeared. My father is lying. Someone has threatened me. If you think I'm going to sit here and wait for you to return with another carefully edited explanation, you're mistaken.”

His jaw flexed.

For several seconds, we stared at each other.

Then he moved aside.

“Stay close to me.”

I followed him out.

---

The drive to my father's house took twenty minutes.

I spent most of it looking through the photograph, searching for a detail I might have missed. The image was grainy, but the man was unmistakably similar to Alexander Cross.

His eyes.

His nose.

The small scar near his left eyebrow.

I remembered seeing that scar in newspaper photographs after his death.

“What if it's someone who looks like him?” I asked.

“That's possible.”

“You don't sound convinced.”

“Because the sender chose a photograph of my father for a reason. Whether it's genuine or not, they want me to react.”

“And are you?”

He glanced at me.

“Of course I am.”

It was the first honest, unguarded answer he had given me all morning.

I looked away.

When we arrived, two of Damien's men were already waiting outside the gate. My father's house looked exactly as I remembered it: cream walls, tall windows, a neatly trimmed garden, and the old iron gate my sister used to complain about whenever it caught her clothes.

But something was wrong.

The front door stood open.

My father never left the door open.

Damien noticed it too.

He signalled to his men, who immediately moved ahead. We entered the house carefully, calling my father's name.

No answer.

The sitting room was undisturbed. A cup of tea sat on the table beside an open newspaper. My father's reading glasses lay beside it.

He had been home recently.

“Dad?” I called again.

A faint sound came from upstairs.

I ran before Damien could stop me.

“Serena!”

I reached my father's bedroom and froze.

The drawers had been pulled open. Clothes lay scattered across the floor. A framed photograph of our family had been smashed, and papers covered the bed.

Someone had searched the room.

Not casually.

Desperately.

I stepped inside, my eyes scanning the destruction.

Then I noticed a small envelope beneath the overturned bedside table.

My name was written across it.

I picked it up.

“Don't open that yet,” Damien said behind me.

I turned sharply. “Why?”

“Because we don't know who left it.”

“It's addressed to me.”

“That doesn't make it safe.”

I stared at the envelope, then at him.

“Do you want to know what it says?”

“Yes.”

“Then stop treating me like a child.”

I opened it.

Inside was a photograph of Isabella.

She stood beside a black car, wearing the silver bracelet I had given her for her birthday. Her hair was shorter than I remembered, and she looked thinner, but there was no doubt it was her.

On the back, someone had written a date.

Six months ago.

Beneath it were five words.

Your father knows where she is.

My knees weakened.

Damien caught my arm before I stumbled.

I barely noticed.

“My father knows where Isabella is,” I whispered.

“Serena—”

“No. He's known all along.”

I turned toward the door, ready to search every room until I found him.

Then I noticed the open wardrobe.

One of my father's jackets was missing.

So was the small leather suitcase he kept for business trips.

And on the floor, beside the window, lay a single envelope stamped with the insignia of the Cross family.

Damien picked it up.

He opened it, read the contents, and became utterly still.

“What is it?” I demanded.

He didn't answer.

I snatched the paper from his hand.

It contained a single sentence, typed in black ink.

Alexander Cross is alive, and Richard Vale is the only man who can lead you to him.

Below the sentence was a handwritten signature.

My father's.

And beneath his signature, in a different hand, were four words that made Damien step back as if he had been struck.

The wedding was the plan.

I looked at him.

“Damien, what does that mean?”

He stared at the paper, his expression turning colder with every passing second.

Then he lifted his eyes to mine.

“It means our marriage was never supposed to be a marriage.”

He paused.

“It was supposed to bring us both here.”

A floorboard creaked somewhere behind us.

We turned.

The bedroom doorway was empty.

But my phone vibrated in my hand.

One final message appeared.

Now that you've found the letter, ask your husband who arranged the wedding.

I looked at Damien.

For the first time, I wondered whether the man I had married had been my enemy from the beginning.

Or whether someone had chosen both of us for a much darker reason.