The Billionaire They Buried

Chapter 13: The Lie

The officers searched the storage room from top to bottom — every shelf, every cabinet, every corner — but the man who had attacked me was gone, like he was never been there at all. One of them finally turned to me. "You said someone assaulted you?"

"I didn't say someone assaulted me. I said I wasn't alone." His jaw tightened. "There was another inmate in here."

The second officer looked around the room. "We don't see anyone."

"That's because he left before you opened the door."

"And how exactly did he leave?" the first one asked, arms folded.

"I was hoping you would tell me."

Neither of them answered that. One knelt beside the broken mop handle instead, turning it over in his hands. "Looks like you started a fight."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "I was defending myself."

"Against who?"

"The man who was just in here." He sighed like he was already tired of me. "Mr. Hayes, we've searched the room. There's no one here. No signs of forced entry. No witnesses." I laughed, and there was nothing warm in it. "You locked me in here."

"Be careful what you're accusing us of."

"I'm accusing whoever locked that door." For a second, neither of them said anything at all. Then one pulled a small notebook from his pocket. "We'll file an incident report."

"I want to see it."

"You'll see it if necessary."

"If necessary?" He ignored that, glancing instead at the blood still drying on my lip. "You should visit the infirmary."

"I'm fine."

"That's not a request."

The infirmary was quieter than the rest of the facility. A nurse cleaned the cut on my lip while another pressed carefully along my ribs. "You've got some bruising," she said. "Nothing appears broken." I nodded and asked if I could go, but before she could answer, the door opened and a correctional captain stepped inside — his uniform carrying several service ribbons the other officers didn't have, his expression giving away nothing at all. "You must be Ethan Hayes."

"I am."

"Captain Morrison." He dismissed the nurse with a nod, and she left quietly, the door closing behind her. "I've read the report."

"What report?"

"The one saying you became aggressive in the maintenance room."

I stared at him. "Aggressive?"

"That's what was written."

My hands clenched. "That's a lie."

"Is it?"

"You've seen my injuries."

"I have."

"So doesn't that tell you something?" He didn't answer, and I took a slow breath before pushing further. "Someone locked me in that room. Someone attacked me. And now someone has rewritten the story."

Morrison studied me for a long moment, longer than I expected, and then said something that caught me off guard. "I've worked in prisons for twenty-two years. I've learnt something in that time." I waited. "The first version of the truth is rarely the real one." For the first time since I arrived here, I genuinely couldn't read what a man was thinking. He stepped closer. "Mr. Hayes. Do you believe your attack was planned?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because it's happened before." I told him about the anonymous note, about my work assignment changing overnight, about the storage room locked from the outside. I didn't mention my grandfather's letter, or the brass key. Some secrets still had to stay buried, even from someone who might actually be trying to help.

When I finished, he nodded slowly. "I'll look into it."

"You believe me?"

"I believe something happened."

"That's not the same thing."

"No," he admitted. "It isn't." He turned toward the door. "Until I know exactly what happened, stay out of trouble."

I almost smiled at that. "I'm not the one looking for trouble."

He paused with his hand on the door. "Sometimes trouble doesn't care." Then he walked out, and I was left wondering whether I just found an ally or simply a better liar than the rest of them.

By the time I got back to Cell 27, Daniel was already on his feet. "What happened?"

I sat down on the lower bunk, my whole body finally registering how much it hurt. "Someone tried to kill me."

His face darkened. "I knew it."

"You knew?"

"I knew today's assignment wasn't normal." I told him what the officers had said — no one else in the room, no signs of forced entry — and Daniel let out a dry laugh that had no humor in it at all. "Of course they did."

"You don't sound surprised."

"I'm not." He lowered his voice. "Years ago, another inmate disappeared after accusing a guard of working with criminals."

"What happened to him?"

"They called it an escape attempt." He looked me straight in the eye. "They found his body three days later."

The cell went quiet around that. "So if a guard is involved," I said slowly, "I won't know who I can trust."

"That's exactly right."

I leaned back against the wall, Captain Morrison's face crossing my mind. Did he genuinely want the truth, or was he simply better at pretending than the rest of them? The answer might end up mattering more than anything else in this place.

That evening, as the block settled into its usual rhythm, an officer stopped outside our cell. "Hayes." I looked up. "You've got mail."

Mail. I frowned — I wasn't expecting anything from anyone. He slid a plain white envelope through the slot, no return address, no prison markings, just my name written across the front. My heartbeat quickened as I picked it up and opened it.

Inside was a single photograph, and the moment I saw it, every drop of blood seemed to drain out of my face.

It was my grandfather, taken inside his private study — the photograph shot only minutes before he died. And barely visible in the reflection of the study window, standing in the background where he shouldn't have been at all, was someone I recognized instantly.