YET ANOTHER WARNING! This is the last chapter. It's pretty long, so it should make up for the shortness of the last two chapters. Thank you.

By the way, Kit and Dewey are a little OOC in this chapter, methinks. Decide for yourself.

He told Kit and Dewey that night. They were stunned as well. "We have to fight this!" Dewey exclaimed. "He'll kill them just to try to get that fortune. We have to—"

"Dewey, it won't do any good," Kit interrupted, trying to hold back tears. "He'll fight back, and you know as well as I do he won't fight fairly. They're dead either way."

"But, Kit, we can't just give up! We can't just abandon them to Olaf and hope he leaves them alive! We have to help them!"

"Dewey," she placed his hand on her stomach, "do you want to live to see our child born? I do, so I suggest you let the Baudelaires handle it themselves."

"But they can't, sweetheart. They don't know what he's like, what he's capable of doing." He took her other hand in his free one. "I want to see my baby, too, but there's no assurance anyone will live past tomorrow. We take life for granted, Kit. We could sit here and do nothing, to hurt or to help others, and die in six hours. At least if Olaf gets us, we'd have died helping someone, which is why VFD was formed. We might be able to distract Olaf and give the kids a chance to escape!"

"No, Dewey! I won't put my child's life in danger like that! No!"

"I didn't say you had to go. I meant—"

As much as he hated to interrupt, Lemony had thought of Dewey's next argument and knew it wouldn't go over too well. "Dewey, she's right. There's nothing we can do. If we try to rescue them, it's not for certain they'll come with us. Believe me, I'd like nothing more than to get them away from Olaf, but we can't. Kit's right, don't put the baby's life on the line. What if it's a precious little baby girl?" Dewey sighed. He opened his mouth and shut it several times, as if he was going to say something.

Dewey glared at him. "That was low, Lemony. Real low."

"It got the idea out of your head, didn't it?"

"Honey," Kit said, "I gotta go to bed. You two can stay up until all hours arguing, but I'm going to sleep."

Her husband stood up quickly. "I can I come with you?"

"Dewey, you're my husband. We share a bed—or body—unless you've done something stupid."

"Well, that's more li—"

Lemony was forced to interrupt again. "I suggest you not say that if you want to continue to be married to my sister."

They left hand in hand, talking about baby names. He watched them sadly, wishing he could've had a life with Beatrice. No, Bertrand, the lucky undeserving dog, had gotten that pleasure. He didn't deserve her. Never in a million years could he love her the way Lemony did. After the bitterness and anger of the break-up had faded, he realized how much he still loved her. She'd stabbed his heart and left it for dead, as it were, but it was still beating for her. Even the dedication of his book (which was effectively all he'd written) was about her. For Beatrice, darling, dearest, dead. Though she would never read it, never know about all the trials and tribulations, as well as the few happy moments, in her children's lives, he felt it was his duty to write about them.

Inspiration struck him. He hurried and got his notebook and wrote as fast as his fingers could.

If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle. This is because not very many happy things happened in the lives of the three Baudelaire youngsters. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire were intelligent children, and they were charming, and resourceful, and had pleasant facial features, but they were extremely unlucky, and most everything that happened to them was rife with misfortune, misery, and despair. I'm sorry to tell you this, but that is how the story goes.

Perfect. A warning. Surely no one would want to read about such a dreadful occurrence. Why was he writing, then? If members of VFD would know the whole story, maybe they wouldn't look daggers at him and whisper behind their hands when he did appear in public. The Baudelaires would have to find out the truth behind their parents' hasty marriage and the organization they were apart of sooner or later. It was the only thing he didn't—hadn't—liked about the way Beatrice and Bertrand had raised his Violet: they'd kept VFD a secret from her.

How could they, though? How could they hide their lives from her? VFD was effectively part of her heritage. Beatrice's family had been active volunteers ever since the organization started. Violet's life, if not Klaus and Sunny's lives, should have revolved around VFD. They should have learned all the codes, known where to go and who to trust when they were in danger. People like Kit and Jacques and Dewey and Frank. People like M. and T.

She should have known people like her father.

Eight years ago

He decided to call her and ask, rather than torture himself about it. "Is Beatrice there?"

"Who?" asked a small voice belonging to a four-year-old Klaus James Baudelaire.

"Can I please talk to your mommy, Klaus?"

"Yeah." He put the phone down with a clunk. In the background, he heard someone crying. Was it Violet?

"Hello?" She seemed tired. He smiled at the sound of her voice.

"Hey, Beatrice. It's me."

"What do you want?"

"I heard that Vi was—"

"My daughter's name is Violet, Lemony. What did you hear?"

"She's my daughter, too, Beatri—"

"What did you hear?"

"I heard that she was sick. Is there anything I can—"

"It's just the chicken pox. Violet will be fine." Had she ever so slightly stressed her child's name?

"Well, is there anything you need? Itch medicines? Anything at all? Has Klaus gotten from her?"

"No, Bertrand just went out—no, Klaus, not right now—he went out to get some more. And no, she got it from her brother. Vi, honey," she called out to her daughter, "get your brother some pudding." Hypocrite, he thought.

His heart started pounding as he got up the nerve to ask his next question. "May I come over and see her?"

She hung up.

Now he would never figure out why he hadn't been allowed to see her, never be able to tell Violet he was her father. Bertrand had probably been a better dad than Lemony could have ever thought about being. He was all she'd ever known, and she'd mourned his death. As much as he hated to admit it, Bertrand was her father, in every way but one.

And that was a big part of the reason it hurt him so much to think about his baby growing up with another man. Because Violet probably didn't know his name, because Bertrand had been there for her when her real father wasn't even allowed to see her, because of her mother's unspoken decision to stay with Bertrand whilst carrying Lemony's child…

That nagging suspicion came to haunt him again. Was she really his? If she was, why hadn't he been allowed to see her? It would make sense if Bertrand was her biological father. Beatrice was mad at him for attempting to tear down The Headquarters, and she didn't want her children to know such a horrible villain.

Frustrated, he went over to the bookshelf and scanned it for something to take his mind off Violet and her mother. He came across a thick novel entitled St. James. A woman was the villain. Her name was Maribella Catalina Santiago, and she had killed Mateo, her roommate-turned-lover-turned-stalker.

He'd decided, a very long time ago, that he should have never finished that book.