Chapter 5 - The Choice
I slipped the notebook into my purse before Victor reached us.
It was the most difficult ordinary movement I had ever made.
Sebastian saw it.
So did Mara.
Neither reacted.
Victor stopped beside the table.
“Problem?”
Sebastian’s face became the mask New York feared.
“No.”
“We need to leave. There’s been a security breach at the hotel.”
My heart lurched.
“My mother?”
“Safe. Someone attempted to access the service elevator using a hotel employee badge.”
Sebastian moved immediately.
“We’re going.”
Victor looked at me.
“Find anything?”
I forced myself to shrug.
“An old letter.”
“Useful?”
“Mostly personal.”
My father’s warning echoed in my mind.
Trust numbers before people.
Victor had protected Sebastian for fourteen years.
He had probably taken bullets for him.
He had sat at his table.
He knew his routines.
His homes.
His weaknesses.
If Evelyn was right, we were standing beside the traitor.
If Evelyn was wrong, we were about to destroy the loyalty of an innocent man.
Outside, Sebastian caught my wrist gently before I entered Victor’s SUV.
“Ride with Mara.”
Victor noticed.
“Why?”
“She needs a woman right now.”
It was an absurd explanation.
Mara nevertheless wrapped an arm around me.
“She’s had a difficult morning.”
Victor looked suspicious.
But he nodded.
Once Mara’s SUV moved into traffic, I handed her the phone.
Evelyn was still connected.
“Talk,” Mara said.
“I can prove Victor took Richard’s money.”
“We already found a payment.”
“That payment wasn’t a bribe.”
I frowned.
“What?”
“It was hush money.”
“For what?”
“Victor discovered Janus’s identity.”
Sebastian was in another SUV.
He couldn’t hear us.
Mara leaned closer.
“Then why warn us about him?”
“Because Janus knows Victor discovered him.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“He has Victor’s daughter.”
Everything inside the vehicle went silent.
Victor had a daughter?
I had never heard anyone mention her.
“Her name is Sophie,” Evelyn continued. “She’s twenty-three. She disappeared from Columbia University yesterday afternoon.”
Mara swore.
“Victor is being controlled.”
“Yes.”
“By Janus?”
“Yes.”
“Who is Janus?”
Evelyn went silent.
“Tell us.”
“I’ll tell Sebastian face-to-face.”
“Why?”
“Because once I say his name, there is no going back.”
The call ended.
Mara stared at me.
“I hate mysterious people.”
“You work for Sebastian.”
“Exactly. I’ve reached my quota.”
At the hotel, my mother was safe.
Sebastian arrived seconds after us.
I pulled him into the bedroom and shut the door.
He listened without interrupting.
When I told him about Sophie, he sat down.
“Victor has a daughter?”
“You didn’t know?”
“No.”
That hurt him.
I could see it.
“He never told me.”
“Maybe hiding her was how he protected her.”
Sebastian rubbed a hand over his face.
“He’s spent fourteen years knowing everything about my life, and I never knew he had a child.”
“Maybe that says something about the kind of life both of you have been living.”
His eyes met mine.
There was no anger.
Only exhaustion.
I sat beside him.
This time, I reached for his hand.
His fingers closed around mine.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he said.
“Do what?”
“Have someone stand beside me while everything falls apart.”
The confession was so quiet I almost missed it.
“You don’t have to know how.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
He looked at our joined hands.
“My mother died when I was thirteen. My father taught Adrian and me that grief was private and fear was expensive.”
“That’s a terrible thing to teach children.”
“My father wasn’t interested in raising children. He was raising successors.”
“And you?”
“I decided I’d never need anyone enough to lose them.”
I understood then.
Sebastian’s coldness had never been emptiness.
It was architecture.
Walls built carefully around a terrified boy who had learned that love created targets.
Then someone knocked.
Two knocks.
Mara.
She entered.
“We have a meeting.”
“Evelyn?”
“Six tonight. St. Agnes Church in Brooklyn.”
Sebastian frowned.
“She chose a church?”
“She says Janus won’t risk violence there.”
Sebastian gave a humorless laugh.
“She clearly hasn’t met enough criminals.”
At five-thirty, we left through the hotel kitchen.
Victor was not told.
Sebastian hated that.
I could see it in every line of his body.
St. Agnes was nearly empty.
Evelyn sat in the third pew.
She looked older than her photograph.
Tired.
Terrified.
She stared at Sebastian as he approached.
“You look like Richard.”
“I’ve spent my entire life trying not to.”
“I know.”
Sebastian stopped.
“You knew me?”
“Since you were seven.”
He said nothing.
Evelyn looked at me.
“You have Thomas’s eyes.”
That almost undid me.
“You knew my father?”
“He saved my life.”
“How?”
“He discovered Janus was preparing to kill me.”
“Then why didn’t you save him?”
Her face crumpled.
“I tried.”
The anger I had carried for sixteen years found somewhere to land.
“My father died alone in the street.”
“I know.”
“You disappeared.”
“Because Thomas made me promise.”
“To abandon us?”
“To stay alive long enough to expose the man who ordered it.”
Sebastian stepped between us emotionally if not physically.
“Who is Janus?”
Evelyn looked toward the altar.
Then back at him.
“Your uncle.”
Sebastian froze.
“Which uncle?”
“Gabriel Ward.”
The name hit him like a bullet.
Richard Ward’s younger brother.
Officially, Gabriel had died twenty years earlier in a boating accident.
Sebastian stared.
“Gabriel is dead.”
“No.”
“I saw the funeral.”
“You saw a closed coffin.”
Mara whispered, “Oh, God.”
Evelyn continued.
“Gabriel hated Richard. He believed the organization should have been his. When Richard pushed him out, Gabriel staged his death and built a shadow network inside your father’s empire.”
“Why wait this long?”
“He didn’t. He’s been controlling pieces of your organization for years.”
Sebastian’s voice became dangerous.
“Which pieces?”
“Police contacts. Port unions. Financial intermediaries. Some of your security.”
“Victor?”
“Not willingly.”
Evelyn’s eyes filled.
“Gabriel took Sophie yesterday.”
Sebastian turned away.
I could almost feel the betrayal ripping through him.
Not Victor’s betrayal.
His own.
He had believed power meant knowing everything.
Yet the people closest to him had hidden entire lives.
“What does Gabriel want?” I asked.
“The ledger Thomas created.”
“Why now?”
“Because Sebastian is selling Ward Meridian’s port holdings.”
I looked at him.
“You’re selling?”
Sebastian nodded.
“Quietly.”
Evelyn said, “Those ports are Gabriel’s last financial arteries. Once the sale closes, he loses access to millions.”
“So he needs leverage,” Mara said.
“He needs Sebastian arrested or dead.”
A sound echoed from the back of the church.
Sebastian turned.
Victor stood beneath the stained-glass window.
Alone.
His face looked twenty years older.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Sebastian’s men moved.
Sebastian raised one hand.
Nobody touched Victor.
“Where is Sophie?”
Victor’s eyes filled.
“I don’t know.”
“Did you clone Mara’s credential?”
“Yes.”
“Did you enter my office?”
“Yes.”
“Did you use Valerie’s umbrella?”
Victor looked at me.
“Yes.”
My chest tightened.
“Why?”
“They told me to frame you.”
Sebastian’s voice was ice.
“And the card?”
“Their instruction.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Victor laughed once, brokenly.
“Because they sent me a video of my daughter with a gun against her head.”
Sebastian stepped closer.
“You should have trusted me.”
“I’ve watched men use the people you love against you for fourteen years.”
“You should have trusted me.”
Victor’s face twisted.
“I was trying to keep her alive!”
The shout filled the church.
Then silence.
Sebastian’s anger vanished.
What remained was pain.
“I would have helped you.”
“I know.”
“Then why?”
Victor looked at him.
“Because Gabriel told me something I believed.”
“What?”
“That you would choose your empire over my daughter.”
Sebastian stared at him.
Victor lowered his head.
“I’m sorry.”
Sebastian walked forward.
For one terrible second, I thought he might hit him.
Instead, he put both hands on Victor’s shoulders.
“Look at me.”
Victor did.
“We’re getting your daughter back.”
Victor broke.
Not dramatically.
His knees simply seemed to lose strength.
Sebastian caught him.
The two hardest men I knew stood in the middle of an empty church holding each other upright.
Then Victor whispered something.
“I know where Gabriel is.”
Sebastian stepped back.
“Where?”
“He called thirty minutes ago. He wants the notebook tonight.”
“Where?”
Victor looked toward me.
“Crown Meridian.”
My stomach dropped.
“He’s inside your building.”
Sebastian’s face changed.
May you like
Victor nodded.
“And he says if Valerie doesn’t bring him Thomas Lane’s notebook before midnight, Sophie dies.”
