Chapter 5 - The Confession in the DarkThe smoke in the east gallery drifted lazily toward the high glass ceiling, smelling of cordite, burnt wool, and spilled blood.
Crosby Vane knelt on the floor, clutching his bleeding shoulder, his face twisted in pain and sheer disbelief. Two of his surviving mercenaries were pinned against the shattered French doors, their hands cuffed behind their backs by Prescott and his men.
I walked slowly across the ruined Persian rug, the heels of my boots clicking rhythmically against the hardwood. I stopped two feet in front of Vane, raised the barrel of my gun, and pressed it squarely against the center of his forehead.
"Please," Vane whimpered, his eyes wide with animal panic, urine staining the front of his tactical trousers. "Lawson—don't—I was just following orders! I swear to God!"
"Whose orders?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
"Richard!" Vane blurted out, tears streaming down his face. "Your brother-in-law! He financed the breach! He gave us the security schematics! He said if we caused enough chaos, the medical team would evacuate the kids and he could intercept them!"
My finger tightened slightly on the trigger. "Why?"
"To finish what your father started!" Vane sobbed. "The merger, Mercer! The entire empire was built on a shell game! If your kids died, the trust reverts to Richard and the board! We needed you broken!"
I stared down at him for a long, agonizing moment. Then, without a word, I brought the heavy steel butt of my pistol down across his temple. Vane collapsed instantly, sprawling facedown onto the shattered glass, unconscious.
"Prescott," I said without turning around.
"Boss?"
"Lock him in the lower vault with the rats. And find Richard. Bring him to my study. Alive. I want him breathing when I take everything he loves away from him."
"On it," Prescott muttered, motioning for his men to haul Vane’s limp body away.
I turned and walked back down the gallery, past the bullet-riddled portraits of my ancestors, toward the east wing.
When I pushed open the doors of the medical suite, the room was quiet. The monitors hummed in steady, reassuring rhythms. Jonah and Blythe were sleeping deeply now, their breathing even, their skin regaining a healthy, rosy glow beneath the white blankets.
Elena was sitting in the armchair beside their beds, carefully cleaning the lens of her sniper rifle with a soft cloth.
I closed the door behind me, leaning my back against the wood.
"You didn't tell me you knew how to handle a Barrett M82," I said quietly.
She didn't look up from her rifle. "There are a lot of things you don't know about me, Lawson. Starting with the fact that I spent three years in the Israeli Defense Forces before my father dragged me back to Seattle to play polite society ornament."
I walked over, pulling up a chair opposite her. The anger that had fueled me through the firefight had vanished, leaving behind a hollow, aching void that only one question could fill.
"You said Genevieve isn't dead."
Elena stopped cleaning the rifle. Slowly, deliberately, she laid the cloth across her knee and raised her amber eyes to meet mine.
"She isn't," Elena said. "On the night your father’s men tried to silence her for discovering that Mercer Industries was laundering cartel money through the Sterling family accounts, she managed to slip out the back of the estate. But she couldn't take her babies. Because if she tried, your father would have hunted her down and killed them all."
My breath caught in my throat. The room seemed to tilt on its axis.
"She's alive?" I whispered, my voice breaking completely. "Where is she?"
May you like
Elena stood up, walking slowly toward the door that led out to the private garden. She paused with her hand on the brass knob, looking back over her shoulder with a smile that carried both forgiveness and a warning.
"She's waiting, Lawson. But before you get to see her, we have a family meeting to finish."
