322 Family reunion (1)
“That’s…”
Zaria sighed at his lack of right words. “Unbelievable? Yes. But it would make sense. How conveniently things kept happening, how Nathaniel’s granddaughter turned out to be the one helping us out—or pretending to, anyway.”
He wasn’t convinced. “If Norman had a daughter older than you, how come you didn’t know about it?”
She frowned. That was a good point. But again, she didn’t know Norman held grudges either. He had made it sound like he didn’t blame Lucy for retaliating against what Ava did years ago.
But again, her eyes widened. “He once said I remind him of his daughter. It was long ago. At the time, he pretended that wasn’t what he meant and said he merely thought his daughter would be like me if he had one. Not physically, of course. In his own words, she would be kind, too stubborn to quit after a few hiccups, and a dreamer.” her eyes narrowed. “But now I think he meant it physically as well. We both got some of our features from the same grandfather, didn’t we?”
He led her to the car. “There’s no way to take a DNA test now that Ciara isn’t with us anymore. But if there’s a family no one knows about, we should be able to find something. I’ll call Skeleton.”
“Skeleton. Of course!” she was overjoyed to finally think of a plan that could fly. “If mother is counting on Norman trying to hurt Zeus, we should rig the entire place. Norm will be wary of mother doing such a thing so Skeleton is our secret weapon.”
He agreed. But first, they needed to know everything there was to know about Ciara. So as soon as they got back home, he tucked her in bed and called Skeleton over.
The latter arrived in half an hour, panting. “What’s the emergency, boss? I ran over as fast as I could.”
.....
“Not fast enough, it seems.” Desmond teased him, leading the way to his study. Once they sat down, he gave Skeleton the file he had received that had everything about Ciara.
“I want to know everything about her.” He stated.
Skeleton opened the file and flipped through, then frowned. “I don’t think there could possibly be anything not covered here. There’s everything about her family, schools she went to, there’s even information on her ex lover. Who else should I investigate in her life? Her ancestors?”
“Some of that is a lie. Or most of it. Zeus was deceived.”
Skeleton frowned. “Yeah, I didn’t think that was possible. But if Zeus was deceived, why would I be able to uncover the truth?”
“You will.” Desmond sat back down, hoping the only thing they were done talking and wasting time. It was not easy to deceive Zeus if he was digging for the truth. If he was only trying to find basic information, however, that was a different story. The man was used to getting everything he wanted in seconds. He wouldn’t suspect anything was fishy if he uncovered a person’s secrets in record time.
Now that it had come to this, he couldn’t help wondering if Norman knew Zeus was finding a substitute and planted Ciara in his way, as well as an entire file’s worth of false information about her.
Skeleton was done in an hour and he couldn’t help yawning. “Those morons deleted everything. I had to recover it.”
And he did it in an hour? That was no easy feat.
As if reading what Desmond was so puzzled about, he waved it off. “I’ve been trying to beat Zeus. One day I will challenge him to a duel. And I don’t mean Zeus the son. I mean Zeus, the mother. The original.” He now knew Zeus was originally Lucy’s alias, but Desmond’s lips twitched. He had the urge to laugh. If he thought Lucy was slacking just because she was the CEO of a multi billion company, he had something else coming for him.
“What did you find?” He brought them back to the main topic.
“Right.” Skeleton turned his laptop around for Desmond to see what he had found. “Ciara was no assassin. She joined the military after high school but she quit before she ever set foot in a battlefield. That must be where she got her firearm skills. Also, her name is not even Ciara. It’s Samara. And if you think that’s all, you are mistaken.”
Desmond looked closer. Nothing could surprise him after everything he had been through but Ciara’s story was insane.
Apparently, Norman had been married before, but it didn’t work out. His wife had left with their young daughter, but because Norman was still battling his alcoholism, he didn’t get any rights to be with his daughter—but that didn’t mean he didn’t have to pay child support.
“The child support part does make sense. I discovered a steady flow of money from his account to an account owned by a woman every month. That must be his ex wife.” Skeleton opened another window in disbelief. “That explains why he poured all his heart into that diner. He and his ex wife opened it together. He must have thought she would come back and when she didn’t, poor old Norman must have been lonely.”
That’s why he befriended Zaria, Desmond thought. It must have been the only way to feel like he had something close to his daughter. He might not have known it yet but Zaria was close in age to Ciara and besides, they had the same eyes.
“Where’s the ex-wife?” Desmond asked.
“Dead. A year ago. That’s why Ciara resurfaced and reconnected with her dad.”
“And then he used her.” He concluded. “He was yet to introduce her to anyone when he found the perfect chance to get back at Lucy.”
It was baffling, but at least there was no more doubt now.
“Tomorrow, Zeus is being transferred to the detention center. Norman might go there to try and take a swipe at him. I need you to be ready.” Well, they were certain of where Zeus would be the next day. He only hoped Norman would play right into their trap.
________
Contrary to their expectation, Norman didn’t try to find Zeus immediately. At first, they all thought he didn’t care or was waiting for the other shoe to drop, but when three days passed and there was no sign of him, they started to panic.
“You can’t stay here for much longer. You are not a criminal.” Lucy was anxious. “I’m taking you out. I can’t believe I thought this was the best plan.”
“Relax, mother. Let’s give it a few more days. A sneaky bastard needs time to plan his moves and besides, I love it here.”
Lucy frowned at him. It was not a joke. A golden cage was still a cage. Not to mention, there was nothing golden about the detention center.
“Did you hear that?” Zeus whispered.
She hadn’t heard a thing, but she didn’t think hearing sounds at a detention center was anything odd. Not until she heard Norman’s voice. She looked around and sprinted for the wall leading to another section of the cells, ducking behind it for cover just as a series of footsteps got closer.
“Five minutes.” A gruff voice said, to which Norman agreed.
“Only five.”
After his footsteps disappeared, Norman finally spoke up with a chortle never heard before. “Hello, nephew.”
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