“Some came back.”
“Some didn’t.”
“He papered holes with internal notes.”
“Dad didn’t know.”
“You sure?”
“I think.”
Adrian hated uncertainty.
“Why didn’t you come to me earlier?”
“I did.”
Adrian remembered their final fight.
Julian standing in his apartment waving photocopies.
Adrian saying Daniel would never steal from their father.
Julian saying:
“You don’t know him.”
Adrian replying:
“I know him better than you know anything because you leave every time responsibility gets boring.”
Cruel.
Easy.
Wrong.
Julian looked at him.
“You remember.”
“Yes.”
“Adrian.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You were manipulated too.”
“I still said it.”
“You were angry.”
“That doesn’t make it fine.”
“No.”
Julian nodded.
“Then apologize.”
“I am.”
“Accepted.”
Adrian blinked.
“That easy?”
“No.”
“But we don’t have another twelve years to perform it.”
Adrian laughed despite himself.
Then cried.
Julian continued.
“Thomas agreed to meet.”
“We were followed.”
“An SUV hit side.”
“I woke in private clinic.”
“Daniel came.”
“First time he told me Thomas died.”
“Second, he said Dad had collapsed.”
“Third, he said you wanted nothing to do with me.”
Adrian stood abruptly.
Julian watched.
“He told you that?”
“Yes.”
“What exactly?”
Julian hesitated.
“He said you told him I was poison.”
Adrian’s face went white.
“I never—”
“I know now.”
“He said you wanted company protected.”
“He said if I kept accusing him, Dad would die.”
“He said I needed treatment.”
Adrian paced.
Julian continued softly:
“I believed pieces.”
“I had head injury.”
“Drugs.”
“Isolation.”
“They showed me newspaper saying I was dead.”
“So eventually I wondered if maybe Julian Duca was person my brain invented.”
Adrian stopped.
No sentence had hurt more.
Julian said:
“That’s what confinement does.”
“It doesn’t only lock door.”
“It makes your memory defendant.”
Adrian sat again.
“Why hide behind my wall?”
Julian explained his escape.
Saint Bartholomew had changed ownership.
Records moved.
Security became sloppy.
Teresa reconnected after Julian used a stolen staff phone.
She sent cash and information.
He escaped through a loading bay.
Spent weeks living quietly under borrowed identity.
Followed Daniel.
Broke into his Back Bay townhouse.
Found ring.
Found copies of financial records.
Took photographs.
Learned Daniel still used the Duca house hidden corridor to store original family trust ledgers because it predated modern company audits.
Julian entered Beacon Hill through an old basement access he remembered from childhood.
Pierce caught him.
There was a fight.
Pierce locked him in the passage.
Julian hid his phone inside an abandoned dumbwaiter vent first.
“He called someone,” Julian said.
“Who?”
“I heard only one side.”
“What did Pierce say?”
“‘He’s here.’”
“Then: ‘What do you want me to do?’”
“Then silence.”
“Then he said: ‘Until tonight?’”
Adrian clenched jaw.
Julian continued.