Lucas’s Other Promise
Chapter 07 - Lucas’s Other Promise
Cindy should have called Andrew.
She knew it while standing across from the restaurant with cold air slipping through the collar of her borrowed coat. She knew it when Thomas Carter leaned across the table and said something that made Lucas’s expression harden.
She knew it when Lucas passed him the drive.
Still, she did not call.
Trust had become expensive, and Cindy had spent too much of it in the last day. She thought of Andrew burning the surveillance file and wondered whether one good choice could repair a dozen wrong ones. Probably not. But she also wondered whether refusing to trust anyone at all was simply another form of fear pretending to be wisdom.
Her mother had written Make him earn it, not Never trust again. Cindy was only beginning to understand the difference.
For now, Lucas had something to earn too.
She moved to the narrow alley beside the restaurant, where a service entrance stood propped open for kitchen staff. The smell of garlic and bleach drifted into the night.
A waiter carrying trash bags barely glanced at her.
Cindy slipped inside.
The corridor led past a kitchen toward the restrooms and private dining rooms. Voices murmured through paneled doors.
She found the booth by following Lucas’s voice.
The wall between the private room and corridor did not reach the ceiling completely. Cindy stood near a decorative screen and listened.
“You’re late,” Thomas said.
“I came,” Lucas replied.
“Andrew doesn’t know?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Cindy’s stomach dropped.
A glass clinked.
Thomas continued. “The girl opened the box?”
Lucas paused.
“Yes.”
“And the ledger?”
“Moved.”
“To where?”
“You’re getting what we agreed.”
“I decide what we agreed.”
Lucas laughed softly.
“No. That might work on people who need your money.”
Thomas’s voice cooled.
“Be careful.”
“I am.”
Another pause.
Then Thomas said, “What about Michael?”
Cindy pressed closer to the screen.
Lucas answered so quietly she almost missed it.
“He’s alive.”
Her heart stopped.
Thomas inhaled.
“Where?”
“That isn’t on the drive.”
“You said—”
“I said I’d prove Andrew found the box. I didn’t say I’d give you Michael.”
Cindy frowned.
The conversation no longer sounded the way it had through the window.
Thomas’s chair scraped.
“You forget who your father worked for.”
“No,” Lucas said. “I remember exactly.”
The quiet in his voice was dangerous.
“My father spent twelve years cleaning up after you and William. Michael was the only Carter who ever tried to get him out.”
Cindy covered her mouth.
Thomas spoke first.
“So this is loyalty?”
“This is debt.”
“To a dead man?”
“Not dead.”
A second chair moved.
Cindy stepped back too late.
The door opened.
Lucas looked directly at her.
For the first time since she had met him, Lucas Brooks appeared genuinely surprised.
Thomas sat behind him.
His hair was whiter than in the security footage. He wore a navy suit and held a polished cane with a silver wolf’s head.
His face was familiar from charity galas, annual reports, and photographs lining Carter Tower.
He smiled at Cindy as though they had been introduced at a fundraiser.
“Ms. Stone.”
Lucas moved between them.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Cindy folded her arms despite the pounding in her chest.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
Thomas chuckled.
“I like her.”
Lucas did not turn around.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Talk to her.”
Thomas studied Lucas.
“You sound like Andrew.”
Cindy stepped sideways so she could see him.
“You paid David Mercer.”
Thomas’s smile faded only slightly.
Up close, Cindy saw the family resemblance. Thomas had Andrew’s dark eyes and the same tendency to become still instead of loud when angry. But where Andrew’s restraint often felt like a lid on emotion, Thomas’s felt like absence. Cindy suddenly understood how a man could spend decades beside hospitals, universities, and politicians without anyone wanting to look too closely at the rooms behind him.
“David was meant to retrieve property that did not belong to you.”
“He split my head open.”
“That was unfortunate.”
“Unfortunate?”
Thomas glanced at his watch.
“Mr. Mercer lacks restraint.”
Cindy felt suddenly calm.
It was the same strange clarity she had experienced when David smashed the lamp in her apartment. Fear sometimes became so large it burned itself away.
“You knew my mother.”
Thomas’s eyes sharpened.
“Yes.”
“What happened to her?”
Lucas touched Cindy’s elbow.
“We’re leaving.”
Thomas said, “Ask Andrew.”
Cindy stopped.
Lucas swore under his breath.
Thomas leaned on the cane.
“Andrew likes to present himself as a reluctant heir. Very moving. But he’s had access to William’s private records for years.”
“That doesn’t mean he knew about my mother.”
“No?”
Thomas’s smile returned.
“Did he tell you why he hired you?”
Cindy stared.
“I applied for the job.”
“Of course you did.”
Thomas lifted his brows.
“And among several hundred applicants, William Carter’s son happened to choose Elaine Stone’s daughter.”
Lucas stepped forward.
“Enough.”
Thomas’s gaze remained on Cindy.
“Ask him when he first learned your name.”
Lucas took Cindy’s arm and guided her into the corridor.
As they passed the kitchen, Thomas called after them. ‘Cynthia.’
She stopped despite Lucas’s grip.
Thomas lifted his glass. ‘Your mother made the same mistake you’re making.’
Cindy turned. ‘Which mistake?’
‘Believing one decent Carter meant the family could be trusted.’
Lucas pulled the door closed before she could answer.
The sentence followed Cindy into the hallway anyway.
She resisted until they reached the street.
Then she pulled free.
“Don’t touch me.”
Lucas raised both hands.
“Fair.”
“What was on that drive?”
“Garbage.”
“You gave Thomas garbage?”
“A fake copy of the bank access log. Wrong storage location for the ledger. False travel records for Michael.”
“You know where Michael is.”
Lucas looked around the street.
“This is not the place.”
“You lied to Andrew.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I made a promise before I worked for Andrew.”
“To Michael.”
Lucas nodded.
Cindy laughed once.
“Does anyone in this family ever tell the truth?”
“I’m not family.”
“You lie like you are.”
That earned a brief smile.
Then it disappeared.
“My father was William Carter’s head of security,” Lucas said. “He knew about the guns. The payoffs. Everything. When Michael tried to expose Thomas, my father helped Margaret get him out.”
“What happened to your father?”
“Heart attack at forty-nine.”
Cindy waited.
Lucas looked at her.
“No, I don’t believe that either.”
Traffic moved behind them.
A bus sighed at the corner.
Cindy wrapped her arms around herself.
“So Michael has been alive all these years.”
“Yes.”
“Does Andrew know?”
“He suspects.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No. Andrew doesn’t know.”
“Why not?”
“Michael’s condition for staying hidden was that Andrew never be told. William was using Andrew by then. Michael believed anything Andrew knew would eventually reach their father.”
“But William is dead.”
“Michael still didn’t trust what Andrew had become.”
The words hurt Cindy on Andrew’s behalf before she could stop them.
“Do you?” she asked.
Lucas considered.
“With my life.”
“Then why keep lying to him?”
“Because trusting a man doesn’t give you ownership of his secrets.”
Cindy looked away.
She hated that the sentence applied to her too.
Cindy studied Lucas for a long moment. He had lied to Andrew, met Thomas in secret, and still somehow sounded more honest now than he had an hour earlier. Maybe truth was not a clean switch people turned on. Maybe it came in layers, each one requiring another risk.
‘Are you going to tell Andrew?’ she asked.
‘About Michael?’
‘About all of it.’
Lucas looked toward the traffic. ‘I think that choice stopped being mine the second you walked into that restaurant.’
Her phone rang.
Emma again.
Cindy answered instantly.
“Where have you been?”
“I’m okay,” Emma whispered.
“Why are you whispering?”
“Because somebody was outside my house.”
Cindy’s knees weakened.
“Are they still there?”
“No. Your scary New York guys showed up.”
“Thank God.”
“I found the other note.”
“What does it say?”
Paper rustled.
Emma read slowly.
“‘Cynthia carries the key. Emma carries the voice.’”
Cindy frowned.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. There’s something else. Grandma wrote on the back.”
“What?”
“‘Bluebird. Do not open unless Michael calls.’”
Lucas’s head snapped toward the phone.
“Ask her what Bluebird is.”
Cindy repeated the question.
Emma was silent.
Then she said, “There’s an old music box in the basement. Blue enamel. Mom’s.”
Lucas went pale.
“What?” Cindy asked him.
Before he could answer, his phone rang.
He looked at the screen.
Every trace of color left his face.
“Who is it?”
Lucas turned the phone so Cindy could see.
The caller ID displayed no number.
Only one word.
MICHAEL.
Lucas answered.
A man’s voice spoke on the other end.
Cindy could not hear the words.
Lucas listened for several seconds, then looked directly at her.
“He wants to talk to you.”
Cindy took the phone.
“Hello?”
For a moment, there was silence.
Then an older man said, “Cynthia, your mother made me promise I would never call unless Thomas found the key.”
Cindy gripped the phone tighter.
“He found it.”
“I know.”
“Who are you?”
The man breathed out.
“My name is Michael Carter.”
May you like
A pause.
“And if you want your sister to live through the week, you need to listen very carefully.”
