Chapter 3
“Please.”
She came toward him.
One of his men instinctively moved, but Gabriel raised a hand.
Claire stopped inches away.
“If you’re calling someone to hurt them…”
She looked at her father.
Then her brother.
Her face showed hatred.
But beneath it, horrifyingly, love.
Old love.
The kind children carried long after it began poisoning them.
“Don’t.”
Gabriel stared at her.
“They gave you to me expecting you to die.”
“I know.”
“They beat you.”
“I know.”
“They framed you.”
“I know.”
“And you’re asking me to spare them?”
Claire wiped her face.
“No.”
She shook her head.
“I’m asking you not to make me responsible for two more dead people.”
Something shifted behind Gabriel’s eyes.
“What do you want me to do?”
It might have been the strangest question ever asked inside that warehouse.
Richard looked up.
Evan stared.
Marcus stopped typing into his phone.
Claire herself seemed unable to process it.
“What?”
Gabriel stepped closer.
“You’ve spent your life being told what happens to you.”
His voice was quieter now.
“Your father decided where you worked. Your brother decided how you were treated. Tonight they decided whether you lived.”
He glanced at Richard.
“They expected me to make the next decision.”
Then he looked at Claire.
“I won’t.”
The rain roared against the roof.
“So I’m asking you.”
His eyes held hers.
“What happens next?”
Claire stared at him for a long time.
Then she looked at her father.
Richard Mercer, sixty-one, silver-haired and once handsome, had always seemed enormous to her.
When she was six, he had carried her on his shoulders through Lincoln Park while her mother took pictures.
At nine, he had taught her to ride a bicycle.
At fourteen, when she began gaining weight, his jokes became sharper.
At sixteen, he stopped asking her to company events.
At nineteen, he called her his “back-office girl.”
At twenty-two, after her mother died, Richard stopped pretending his cruelty was humor.
Yet Claire could still remember his hand around hers at the hospital.
That was the problem with monsters.
The worst ones were rarely monsters every day.
Sometimes they made pancakes.
Sometimes they remembered your birthday.
Sometimes they destroyed you slowly enough that you confused survival with loyalty.
Claire looked at Gabriel.
“I want the truth.”
Evan laughed nervously.
“That’s it?”
She turned toward him.
“No.”
Her voice became calm.
“I want everything.”
Gabriel’s eyebrow lifted.
Claire wiped the last tear from her cheek.
“The accounts. The real ledgers. The contracts. The deleted logs. Every payment you made.”
Richard went white.
Gabriel understood.
“You think you can find my money.”
“I think I can find everybody’s money.”
Gabriel studied her.
“And if you do?”
Claire looked at the two men who had offered her life in exchange for theirs.
“I decide what happens with the evidence.”
Gabriel smiled for the first time that night.
Not warmly.
Not kindly.
But with respect.
Behind them, Marcus ended a phone call.
“We found it.”
Richard’s knees seemed to weaken.
Marcus looked at Gabriel.
“Not the money. The surveillance footage from Mercer Freight.”
Claire froze.
“What footage?”
Marcus turned the screen.
A grainy image appeared.
Richard’s office.
Claire entering.
Evan locking the door behind her.
The recording had no sound.
It did not need any.
Claire watched her own body shrink on the tiny screen.
She watched her father point to papers.
Watched herself shake her head.
Watched Evan grab her.
Watched Richard raise his hand.
Then the footage cut to black.
Claire stared.
Richard whispered, “Claire, sweetheart—”
She made a sound like someone had punched the air out of her.
Sweetheart.
Now.
He called her sweetheart now.
Gabriel watched her face.
Then he pressed a number on his phone.
Marcus said carefully, “Gabriel?”
Claire’s breathing quickened.
“Who are you calling?”
Gabriel looked directly at her.
“The last person your father expects.”
Richard began struggling.
“No.”
For the first time that night, genuine terror entered his voice.
“No, Gabriel. We can settle this.”
Gabriel ignored him.
The call connected.
He spoke one sentence.
“Bring Evelyn Mercer here.”
Claire stopped breathing.
“My aunt?”
Richard whispered a curse.
Gabriel put the phone away.
Claire stared at him.
Aunt Evelyn had disappeared from the family twelve years earlier.
Richard said she was unstable.
Evan said she stole from the company.
Claire’s mother had forbidden anyone from speaking her name.
Claire had been fifteen the last time she saw her.
Gabriel looked at Richard.
“Your daughter isn’t the first woman in your family you tried to bury.”
May you like
Claire slowly turned toward her father.
And for the first time all night, Richard Mercer looked less afraid of Gabriel Vale than he did of his own daughter discovering why.
