Thomas Learns The Year
Chapter 10 - Thomas Learns The Year
Thomas believed it was 2014.
The clinic had controlled calendars, newspapers, and television access. Staff explained changes in technology as part of his cognitive confusion. When he asked why his hair had turned gray, they said trauma distorted self-perception.
In the secure hospital, Nurse Claire placed a tablet before him.
She showed the date.
Photographs of Julian through the years.
Cross Global buildings constructed after the crash.
Grace’s wedding.
The funeral held in Thomas’s name.
Thomas stopped at the image of Julian standing beside a closed coffin.
“My son buried me.”
Julian sat across from him.
“I thought you were inside.”
Thomas touched the screen.
Fifteen years could not enter the mind all at once. He learned in pieces and grieved each separately.
His daughter Grace had moved to Europe after fighting with Victoria.
His oldest friend died six years earlier.
The boat from the childhood photograph had been sold.
Richard closed the factory where Thomas began.
Emma and Julian had been married for three years.
Thomas apologized to Julian repeatedly for not escaping.
Julian finally stopped him.
“You were injured, drugged, and lied to.”
“I believed them.”
“So did I.”
The shared shame softened something.
Thomas’s memory returned unevenly. He recalled the crash in flashes: Richard’s vehicle, smoke, someone pulling him across gravel, Victoria’s voice in an ambulance saying, “We can still fix this.”
He remembered signing papers while sedated.
Marcus compared those signatures with trust amendments. Victoria and Richard used them to move Thomas’s shares into their control.
The original Blue Harbor trust automatically revoked any authority obtained through coercion. If the documents survived, Thomas could restore ownership and protect the company from the conspirators’ creditors.
Richard’s drives contained scanned copies.
The original was missing.
Thomas looked at the compass ring, now returned by investigators from Victoria’s safe.
He twisted the north point.
A tiny metal strip slid free.
Engraved inside was a storage code.
Thomas smiled faintly.
“I told you the ring was a compass.”
The code opened a private vault beneath the original Cross machine shop.
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Blue Harbor had been waiting there for fifteen years.
The dead founder had built a way home before anyone tried to bury him.
