Page 133 of Cruel Riches

“Chained?”

“Yes. My mother has been keeping him down there for the last ten years. She’s the one who broke him out of prison.”

“Why the hell would she do that?” I asked, twisting my lips into a sneer. “Does a proclivity for imprisoning people in old bomb shelters run in your family?”

“No.” Nate lifted his palms. “Apparently my parents were friends with your dad, and they knew what was going on back then. They helped him fake his own death, and my mother has been keeping it up for the last ten years. He’s only chained down there to stop him from being tempted to leave, because it’s too dangerous. They need everyone to believe he’s dead, or else the Golden Circle will kill him.”

His story sent a swift, vicious jolt through my system, like an electrical shock. It was almost too outlandish to be fictional. After all, who the hell could dream up something so ludicrous?

A memory suddenly flashed in my mind, and I slowly sat down again, feeling as if my legs might collapse at any moment. “I just remembered something,” I said, voice barely above a whisper.

“What?”

I looked up at him. “Remember when I broke into your father’s study?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“I saw something while I was in there. An old diary that belonged to your father. It mentioned my father.”

Nate frowned. “What did it say?”

“Not much. It just had his home address and his Blackthorne office address.”

“So that proves it, then,” he said, brows rising. “They knew each other.”

“I guess so, but…” I trailed off and slowly shook my head as my chest began to ache. “Is this really happening?”

“Yes.”

“My father is really alive?”

“Yes. He’s been here all along, in a bunker right over there.” Nate pointed toward the far end of the room, near the storage cupboards. “Whenever you heard music down here, it was him.”

The look in his eyes was so raw, so jarringly honest, that I couldn’t bring myself to doubt him anymore. As ridiculous and crazy as his story was, I knew it was true.

My father was alive.

The ache in my chest swelled until I felt as if I were choking. Tears leaked down my cheeks as bile stung the back of my throat, and my body shook so much that it looked fake, like a high schooler in a small-town play simulating shock and fear.

Sinking down onto the mattress, I shut my eyes and tried to suck in air to get my breathing under control. In, out. In, out. But try as I might, I couldn’t stop the racking sobs and hyperventilation. All the years of grief and anguish were flooding through me, scraping me raw, and it felt as if it would never end.

Nate sat by me as I let it all out, keeping one hand on my back. It wasn’t an affectionate gesture—just a way to stop me from rolling off the bed and cracking my head open on the floor—but it was comforting all the same.

“I know it’s a massive shock,” he finally said. “But you need to get it together.”

I took a deep breath. “I just… I can’t believe this is happening right now,” I whispered. “I thought he was dead.”

“Well, they never actually found a body, did they?”

“But… the blood…” I shook my head as more tears spilled over my cheeks.

“They faked it all. They took blood from him to set it up,” Nate explained. “They even pulled some of his teeth out to make it look like his body was up in that national park at some point. That way everyone would believe some sort of vigilante broke him out of prison and murdered him.”

I flinched at the thought of my father’s blood splashing all over the ground. “That’s fucking crazy.”

“I know. But it’s true, and it worked. Everyone thought he was dead. Even his own family.”

Swallowing hard, I finally used all my strength to force myself back up. “Now that you know about this, what are you going to do?” I asked in a small voice. “I mean, you’re going to let him out, right?”

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