Chapter 3 - The Bus Ticket
Charles stared at the purple ink.
October 14th.
His sister’s closed-casket funeral had been on October 11th.
The silence in the room grew heavy, broken only by the sound of rain lashing against the floor-to-ceiling windows. Charles reached out, his large, calloused hand hovering over the small slip of paper.
“Where did you get this?” he demanded, his voice dropping to a dangerous, gravelly register.
“I told you,” Teresa said from the sofa. She sounded exhausted now, the sudden burst of clarity draining out of her. She pulled a knitted blanket over her knees. “You think you control the world, Charlie. You think your men see everything. But they only see what you tell them to look for.”
Charles ignored his mother’s jab. His focus was entirely on Emily.
He stepped into her personal space. The height difference was massive. He was a man who cast a long, terrifying shadow in the city's underworld, yet this maid in a cheap burgundy sweater did not step back.
“Who are you?” Charles asked softly. “Because you are not just a maid.”
“My name is Emily Parker,” she said, keeping her chin up. “And I came here to find the truth about my brother.”
Charles frowned. “Your brother?”
“David Parker.”
The name meant nothing to Charles. He searched his memory—rival bosses, politicians, soldiers, informants. Nothing.
“He was nineteen,” Emily said, reading his blank expression. Her voice tightened with bitter anger. “He worked at a gas station on Route 9. The route your sister took the night she ran away.”
Charles’s pulse pounded in his ears. Route 9. The ravine. The burned-out chassis of Penny’s car.
“The police said Penny was alone,” Charles stated.
“The police in this city belong to you, Mr. Vance,” Emily countered sharply. “They say whatever your payroll tells them to say.”
“I didn't pay anyone to cover up my sister’s death!” Charles roared, the volume finally breaking through his iron control.
Teresa flinched on the couch.
Charles immediately stepped back, running a hand over his face, wrestling his temper down. “I buried her,” he said, quieter now. “I identified the ring. The bracelet. The watch.”
“You identified metal,” Emily corrected. “You didn't identify a body. The fire was too hot.”
She carefully placed the folded bus ticket onto the coffee table, right next to the discarded pizza boxes.
“My brother David disappeared the exact same night your sister died,” Emily continued, pulling her arms around herself as if suddenly cold. “The police wouldn't look for him. They said he was a runaway. A nobody. For nineteen years, I thought he was dead. Until last month.”
Charles narrowed his eyes. “What happened last month?”
Emily reached into her deep sweater pocket.
“I was cleaning out my mother’s attic after she passed away,” Emily said. “I found an old duffel bag hidden in the insulation. It belonged to David.”
She pulled out a small, velvet pouch.
“Inside was this bracelet,” Emily said. “And this ticket. But that wasn't all.”
Emily untied the pouch. She tipped it over her palm.
A heavy, gold pocket watch slid out. The metal was scratched, but the intricate engraving on the front was undeniable.
Charles stopped breathing.
It was a roaring lion clutching a rose. The Vance family crest.
“My father’s watch,” Charles whispered.
“David didn't steal it,” Emily said quickly. “There was a letter in the bag. He wrote that a terrified girl gave him the bracelet, the watch, and a handful of cash at the gas station. She begged him to let her hide in the back of his truck. She said powerful men were trying to kill her.”
Charles felt the room spin. Powerful men.
He was the boss. If anyone was hunting a Vance in this city, they would answer to him. But nineteen years ago, his father had still been alive. His father had run the family with a ruthless, paranoid iron fist.
“Why did you bring this to my mother?” Charles asked, turning to Teresa. “Why not come to me?”
Teresa laughed. It was a dry, hollow sound. “Because you would have burned it, Charlie. You protect the family name above everything.”
“I protect you!” Charles snapped.
“You protect the idea of us,” Teresa corrected softly. “You didn't want to look too closely at the crash, did you? Because if you did, you would have had to ask why Penny was running in the first place.”
Charles stared at his mother. The dementia... it wasn't a constant fog. She had moments of terrifying lucidity.
“She was running from Dad,” Charles said slowly, the truth tasting like ash in his mouth.
“No,” Emily interrupted.
Charles looked at her.
Emily flipped the gold watch over in her palm. “Look at the back, Mr. Vance.”
Charles took the heavy gold timepiece from her hand. He turned it over.
Scratched into the smooth gold casing, done hastily with a pocketknife or a key, were three letters.
M. A. R.
Charles stared at the letters. His blood ran cold.
Marcus.
Marcus was Charles’s right-hand man. His most trusted advisor. The man who had mentored Charles after his father died.
Before Charles could process the betrayal, a small voice echoed from the hallway.
“Mommy?”
Charles whipped his head around.
Standing in the doorway was a little boy, no older than six. He wore oversized Spider-Man pajamas and clutched a worn teddy bear. He was rubbing his eyes, looking sleepily at the three adults.
Emily immediately rushed to the boy, scooping him up. “Toby, sweetheart, I told you to stay in the staff quarters.”
“I heard yelling,” the boy mumbled, burying his face in Emily’s neck.
Charles stared at the boy. Then he stared at Emily.
Staff were strictly forbidden from bringing children onto the estate.
But that wasn't what paralyzed Charles.
May you like
It was the boy’s eyes. When the child looked up at him, Charles saw the exact shade of piercing, stormy gray that belonged to only one bloodline in the city.
The Vance bloodline.
