Chapter 6 - THE COUSIN WHO LIED
I hit Marcus.
Hard.
He didn't defend himself.
“Why?”
“I didn't know.”
“You picked up the drug that killed my father!”
“I picked up a package.”
“For whom?”
“My mother.”
“Your mother was dead!”
“I thought she was.”
That made no sense.
Then Marcus explained.
Eleven months ago, he received an anonymous message claiming Vivian was alive.
The sender demanded he collect a package and leave it at Grand Central.
Marcus did.
He never opened it.
Two days later, Gavin died.
“Why didn't you tell anyone?”
“Because I thought it was blackmail.”
“You thought somebody knew your mother was alive?”
“No.”
Marcus looked sick.
“I thought Dad had lied about when she died.”
Damian asked:
“Who sent the message?”
Marcus showed us.
Untraceable.
But one phrase stood out.
Do this if you want the truth about Room 414.
Someone had manipulated Marcus.
Just like they manipulated everyone else.
Then Damian discovered something Rowan had hidden for decades.
Dr. Kessler wasn't simply a corrupt physician.
He was Vivian's older brother.
Marcus's uncle.
My father's brother-in-law.
And the technician who died after the original prototype accident?
Kessler's son.
Everything changed.
Arthur Kessler had lost his only child because Gavin and Rowan's prototype failed.
He blamed both brothers.
Rowan paid him.
Gavin tried to expose the accident.
Vivian was caught between them.
Years later, Kessler began medicating his own sister, convincing Rowan her mental health was deteriorating.
He poisoned the family slowly.
Not only with drugs.
With guilt.
Secrets.
Suspicion.
Dad eventually discovered the pattern.
And Kessler killed him before he could expose it.
Rowan hadn't murdered my father.
But he had created the conditions that allowed it.
His cover-up twenty-two years earlier gave Kessler power over everyone.
When confronted, Rowan finally broke.
He admitted everything.
The defective component.
The settlement.
Vivian.
The investigator.
He had Gavin followed because he knew his brother was preparing to go public.
“But I didn't kill him.”
Rowan looked at me.
For the first time in my life, my uncle looked small.
“I swear to you, Elena.”
“Would you have stopped him?”
Silence.
That was the answer.
“You humiliated him at dinner because you were afraid.”
Rowan looked away.
I understood.
My father had been dead eleven months and Rowan was still fighting with him.
Still trying to prove the brother who chose integrity had been foolish.
Because if Gavin wasn't foolish—
Rowan had spent twenty-two years being wrong.
Damian stood beside me.
Not in front.
Beside.
That mattered.
Police arrested Kessler the next morning.
But before they could question him—
he vanished from custody during a hospital transfer.
May you like
And Dad's underground workshop exploded.
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