Chapter 4 - THE MAN WHO SERVED TWO MASTERS:
Lily stared at Samuel in disbelief.
“You’re his friend.”
Samuel’s gun trembled.
“I am trying to keep you alive.”
“By pointing a weapon at us?” Adrian asked.
“Sebastian’s men are surrounding the station.”
Adrian glanced at the reflections in the metal lockers.
At least four armed men were approaching.
Samuel lowered his voice.
“They believe I work for them.”
“Do you?”
“I did.”
Adrian’s anger sharpened.
“For how long?”
“Twenty-three years.”
Lily moved closer to Adrian.
Samuel looked ashamed.
“Sebastian recruited me after my wife became ill.”
“He paid for her treatment?”
“He threatened to end it.”
Samuel’s eyes remained fixed on the approaching men.
“I gave him information.”
“You told him about Eleanor.”
“Yes.”
The confession struck Adrian with physical force.
Samuel had attended birthdays.
Funerals.
Private family dinners.
He had comforted Adrian after Eleanor disappeared.
All those years, he had served the man responsible.
“Why help us now?” Adrian asked.
“Because Eleanor discovered what I had done.”
Samuel swallowed.
“She could have exposed me.”
“But she didn’t.”
“No.”
“She gave me a chance to protect Lily.”
The armed men were twenty feet away.
Samuel raised his voice.
“I have the diary!”
The leader stopped.
“Bring it to us.”
Samuel stepped toward Adrian.
“Give me the satchel,” he whispered.
Adrian hesitated.
“Trust me once.”
Adrian handed it over.
Samuel walked toward the men.
Then he threw the satchel beneath a passing luggage cart.
The armed men turned.
Samuel fired at the ceiling.
Travelers screamed and scattered.
Adrian lifted Lily and ran toward the platform.
Victoria followed.
Security officers moved between them and Sebastian’s men.
A train was pulling away.
Adrian jumped through the final open door with Lily in his arms.
Victoria caught the railing.
Adrian pulled her inside.
Samuel remained on the platform.
One of the gunmen struck him from behind.
“Samuel!” Lily cried.
The train accelerated.
Adrian watched through the glass as Samuel fell.
Police officers rushed into the station.
The armed men disappeared into the crowd.
Adrian’s security chief, Marcus Reed, entered from another carriage.
“We recovered the satchel.”
He handed Adrian the diary.
“Samuel created enough confusion for our team to retrieve it.”
“Is he alive?”
“Paramedics reached him.”
Adrian looked back toward the shrinking platform.
Samuel had betrayed Eleanor.
But he had just risked his life for Lily.
Victoria sat across from them.
“My father will know we found the locker.”
“He already knows,” Adrian said.
His phone rang.
A video appeared.
Charles Ashbourne was tied to a chair in a dark room.
His face was bruised.
Sebastian stood behind him.
He was seventy years old, silver-haired, and impeccably dressed.
He looked like a respected statesman.
He spoke like a man discussing ordinary business.
“Victoria, you have disappointed me.”
Victoria covered her mouth.
Sebastian continued.
“Bring Lily and both hairpins to the Winter Palace before midnight.”
Adrian paused the video.
“The Winter Palace has been closed for decades.”
Victoria nodded.
“My father controls the restoration company.”
Lily looked at her.
“Will he hurt your husband?”
Victoria could not answer.
Adrian opened Eleanor’s diary.
Most pages described years of hiding.
Eleanor and Daniel had moved between villages under false names.
They had collected evidence against Sebastian.
They discovered that Project Nightfall involved seven secret detention sites.
People who threatened Sebastian were imprisoned, drugged, and declared dead.
Eleanor believed Daniel had been taken to one of those sites.
The final entries were written six months earlier.
Someone had found them.
Eleanor planned to place Lily at Saint Catherine’s temporarily.
She intended to meet an old ally named Miriam Cole.
The last sentence stopped halfway across the page.
If Miriam is telling the truth, then Daniel is alive, and Sebastian has kept him beneath—
The rest of the page had been torn away.
Adrian searched the binding.
Several pages were missing.
Lily touched the inside cover.
“There’s something under the leather.”
Adrian carefully pulled back the lining.
A photograph fell out.
It showed an isolated white building beside the sea.
A lighthouse stood in the distance.
On the back, Eleanor had written one word.
Nightfall.
Marcus Reed examined the coastline.
“This could be anywhere.”
Victoria stared at the photograph.
“I know that lighthouse.”
Adrian looked at her.
“Where is it?”
“Blackwater Island.”
The island belonged to the Crown.
Officially, it was uninhabited.
As a child, Victoria had visited once with her father.
She remembered underground tunnels beneath the abandoned naval hospital.
Adrian made a decision.
“We go to the island.”
Victoria stood.
“My husband is at the Winter Palace.”
“Sebastian wants us there because he knows we found something.”
“You are asking me to abandon Charles.”
“I am asking you to help find the only leverage that may keep him alive.”
Lily opened the diary again.
A small card slipped from between two pages.
It contained a telephone number.
Beneath the number, Eleanor had written:
Miriam knows where they buried the living.
Adrian called.
A woman answered after one ring.
“Eleanor?”
“No,” Adrian said.
“This is her brother.”
Silence followed.
Then the woman began to cry.
“You found Lily.”
“Yes.”
“Is she safe?”
“For now.”
Miriam’s voice became urgent.
“You must not take her to Blackwater Island.”
“Why?”
“Because that is exactly where Sebastian wants her.”
Adrian stared at Victoria.
“What is on that island?”
Miriam whispered the answer.
“A laboratory built to erase people without killing them.”
Lily gripped Adrian’s hand.
“Was my mommy there?”
“Yes.”
“Where is she now?”
Miriam took a shaking breath.
“I helped Eleanor escape six months ago.”
Adrian felt hope explode inside him.
“Then she is alive.”
“She was.”
The way Miriam spoke silenced everyone.
“What happened?”
“Sebastian found us.”
“Where did he take her?”
“I don’t know.”
Adrian closed his eyes.
Miriam continued.
“But before they captured Eleanor, she told me the third hairpin contained a list.”
“What list?”
“The real identities of everyone imprisoned through Project Nightfall.”
Adrian remembered the woman who had stolen the third hairpin.
Sebastian now possessed it.
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Miriam’s next words revealed why he was willing to kidnap, threaten, and murder to keep it.
“Your father’s name is on that list”:
