Chapter 36 #2
His eyes drift over the gallery. “Our wars have always been fought in boardrooms, parliaments, banks... and occasionally on battlefields.” He continues walking. “The newspapers write about governments.” He looks back at me. “They rarely write about the families standing behind them.”
The room ends beneath another pair of doors. Steel wrapped in walnut with no visible handles.
Two men stand guard, each about six feet tall, wearing charcoal suits cut so perfectly they almost resemble uniforms. What I notice is that neither carries a visible weapon.
The men are highly trained. The one on the left places his hand against a hidden scanner.
A soft chime sounds. The doors separate silently. Beyond them...
A library. Three stories of shelves disappear into shadow. Rolling ladders stretch toward balconies circling the room. A fire burns low inside a stone hearth large enough to stand inside. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlook the valley below, where thousands of lights shimmer beneath.
A man stands with his back to us, perfectly still, his hands clasped behind him. Broad enough that for one impossible second... I think I’m looking into a mirror twenty-five years from now. The resemblance is obvious.
His suit fits like it were sewn onto him. He has the same textured hair as mine, dark hair threaded but with silver streaks that rest neatly at his collar.
Matteo stops at the threshold. “So many men spent eighteen years searching for the heir to House Devereaux.”
The figure at the window doesn’t move.
Matteo’s voice lowers. “They never imagined...” A pause. “That one day he would walk through the front door himself.”
The man slowly turns, and time stops as honey-colored eyes roll over my frame in scrutiny.
The same eyes that have stared back at me every morning in the mirror.
The same sharp jaw and heavy shoulders. Age has added silver to his temples and experience to the lines around his mouth, but nothing else. He studies me for a long moment.
As someone trying to find pieces of a woman inside the face of the son she kept from him.
Finally, he speaks. “You stand exactly the way I did at your age.” His voice calm. “You got that from me.” He takes one step forward. “But the shape of your eyes...” The faintest sadness crosses his face. “That is the last thing she ever gave me.”
Silence settles between us. Neither of us knows how to bridge eighteen years with a single conversation. This is not the way I imagined meeting my father for the first time.
So we simply stand facing each other. Two men separated by a lifetime, looking at the proof that blood remembers what time cannot.
The fire crackles softly between us, and every instinct I learned inside Unit 9 tells me to find the exit points. Two doors. Eight windows. Six cameras. Two hidden inside the carved beams. Old habits don’t disappear because someone builds a prettier cage.
Valet notices my eyes moving. “The cameras aren’t for you.”
“I wasn’t worried about me.”
His mouth almost smiles. “I know.”
A long silence stretches between us. Then, unexpectedly, he walks past me to the bar on the far corner. He pours two fingers of whiskey into a crystal tumbler before setting it on the table nearest the fireplace.
He doesn’t hand it to me because he leaves the choice entirely up to me.
“I don’t drink.”
“I know.”
“You seem to know a lot.”
“I’ve spent eighteen years trying to.”
That answer lands harder than I expect.
He walks toward a wall covered in portraits. They’re not paintings of strangers. Based on the resemblance, they’re family. Generations of men, women, and children.
Each carry the same wolf somewhere on their clothing. Valet stops beneath the largest portrait of a man in military dress standing beside a throne that no longer exists.
“Bastien Devereaux.” His voice carries quiet respect. “My grandfather.” Another portrait. “Aurelia, my great-grandmother.” Another. “Lucien. He was the first Devereaux to sit on the Crown Council.”
My eyes drift across dozens of faces, and one thing becomes impossible to ignore. They all resemble him. Which means...
They resemble me.
“You’ve spent your entire life wondering who you looked like.” He turns toward me. “Now you know.”
The room falls silent again.
Finally, I ask the only question that matters. “Why?”
His expression changes immediately. “Why didn’t you find me?” I shake my head, trying to make sense of it all. “Why now?”
He walks to the fire, and for a long moment, he simply watches the flames before he speaks. “When your mother disappeared...she disappeared from everyone.”
He reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket, removes a photograph, and turns. He slides it across the table between us.
I see a younger woman and instantly recognize my mother. She’s laughing with one arm wrapped around me while we’re feeding birds in a park. I must be three years old. My chest grows tight as needles prick my nose.
I’ve never seen this picture.
“Where did you get this?”
“I took it.”
I look up sharply. “You were there?”
“I was never far.”
The room seems to tilt.
“I couldn’t approach.”
“Why?”
“Because every time we found her...” He places another photograph beside the first. It looks like she is in a different city.
Her hair a different color like she purposely dyed it.
He slides another picture and another. Different places, clothes, and hair color.
Every photograph shows my mother and me.
“She changed countries.” Valet’s voice is calm. “She changed passports. Names. She burned every trail we followed.” He looks down at the pictures. “Your mother was an extraordinary woman.”
I stare at him as he takes a sip of his drink. “Then why stop looking?”
His honey-colored eyes meet mine. “I never did.”
He walks toward his desk and presses a button hidden beneath the edge of the desk. A screen rises silently from inside the wood. Hundreds of files appear. Satellite images. Files.
Every file bears one name. Vitale.
“I assigned one hundred and forty-three people to find you.”
The number steals my breath.
“For eighteen years.”
Another image appears from a security camera. It’s the campus at Kenyan University. Then an image of me walking across campus in a black hoodie.
“The Order made one mistake.” He zooms in. “There is no question who my son looks like.” Then another image pops up on the screen. My scar. The one across my hand.
Valet smiles sadly. “And he has mine.”
He closes the screen. “I recognized you immediately.”
“So why didn’t you come?”
“I did.”
My voice hardens. “No.”
“I came.”
“You simply couldn’t see me.”
He walks toward another desk. This one is covered with maps and blueprints. Photographs of Unit 9. My stomach tightens.
“You were never forgotten.”
He points toward the underground prison. “You were contained.”
I step closer. “What does that mean?”
Valet studies the blueprint. “Vikiar discovered your identity the night he killed your mother.”
My blood runs cold. Rage boils beneath my veins.
“He searched the home she had you in, and he found documents she thought she’d destroyed. He learned two things.” Valet looks directly at me. “First...that you were my son.”
A long pause.
“And second...that if House Devereaux ever found you, the Order would cease to exist.”
The room is silent except for the fire as my brain scrambles to piece it all together. The reason. The sons of Kenyan. What they had me do for years. The years they kept me locked up.
“See, they couldn’t kill you. They couldn’t release you. They also couldn’t let the world know they had you.” His finger traces the outline of Unit 9. “So they buried you beneath Kenyan.”
My jaw tightens. “They tortured me.”
“They tried to.” His voice remains even. “But every report they sent upward said the same thing.”
Our eyes meet. “Despite the trauma, they couldn’t break you.”
He lets those words hang in the air.
Then quietly adds, “They weren’t trying to contain a monster. But all they were trying to keep is a king from reaching his throne.”
The words echo through the library. For the first time since I walked through these doors...I don’t feel anger. I feel something far more dangerous. Vengeance.
Valet studies my face as though he can see the shift happening. “Come.” He turns toward another pair of carved doors hidden beyond the library. “There are seven chairs in this house.”
He glances over his shoulder. “And tonight, you’ll learn why one of them has remained empty since the day you were born.”