Chapter 4 - The House of Ashes
“Lucas, stop!” Bella yelled, running after him and grabbing his coat sleeve.
He spun around, grabbing her wrists—not hard enough to hurt her, but with enough strength to hold her still. His face was flushed, his jaw trembling.
“You hid my blood from me!” he roared, the sound echoing across the quiet orchard, making the birds scatter from the apple trees. “You knew who I was! You knew what I lost in that fire! You let me believe I was the last living Dracott on this earth while you raised my sons in a shack in Kentucky!”
“I hid them to keep them alive!” Bella screamed back, tears of anger finally bursting from her eyes. “Look at you! Look at the men surrounding this house with automatic weapons! Is that what you wanted for two four-year-old boys? To live in a fortress? To look under their beds for bombs? To grow up like you—cold, alone, and waiting for someone to shoot them?”
Lucas flinched as if she had struck him across the face with an iron bar.
He slowly released her wrists. He looked down at his own hands, then looked around the quiet farm—the open fields, the red barn, the absolute peace of a life he had never been allowed to touch.
Before he could answer, the rear door of the third black SUV opened sharply.
A man stepped out. He was in his late fifties, dressed in a heavy tweed coat, walking with a pronounced limp. He had a sharp, hooked nose and thin lips twisted into a strange, triumphant smile.
It was Wendell Dracott—Lucas’s uncle. The man who had allegedly died in the car fire twenty-five years ago.
Bella backed away toward her boys as Wendell walked toward them, supported by two armed guards who didn't look like Lucas’s men. Their eyes were hungry, dangerous.
“Well, well, Lucas,” Wendell rasped, his voice sounding like dry leaves blowing across concrete. “I came all the way to Kentucky because I thought you were finally liquidating your hidden real estate. I never expected to find a family secret.”
Lucas’s posture instantly shifted. The grieving father vanished, replaced in a heartbeat by the terrifying mob chief who destroyed doors. He stepped between Wendell and Bella, his hand sliding beneath his coat to grip the handle of his weapon.
“Wendell,” Lucas said, his voice dropping into an icy register that made the air feel twenty degrees colder. “You were supposed to be in Geneva.”
“Geneva is cold, nephew,” Wendell sneered, his eyes flicking past Lucas to the two small boys huddled on the cottage porch. “And the money you’ve been paying to keep my mouth shut about the family trust isn't enough anymore. Not when I see that you’ve produced two new heirs.”
Bella felt a cold dread settle in her stomach. “Lucas... who is he?”
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“He is the monster who set the fire twenty-five years ago,” Lucas said without taking his eyes off his uncle. “He killed my parents. He set the charge in the second car to fake his own death, wiped his debts, and lived off my family’s offshore accounts while I rebuilt the empire from ashes.”
Wendell chuckled, a cold, bitter sound. “And I would have taken it all back three years ago if you hadn't been so paranoid, Lucas. But now? Now I don't need to fight you for the shipping routes. I just need those two little boys.”
