Chapter 7 - THE MOLE
He didn’t tell Isa.
Not yet. He told himself it was because she needed rest, and that was true. He told himself it was because the information wasn’t confirmed, and that was also true. But underneath both of those reasons was a third one he didn’t like to look at: he wanted to solve it before she had to know. He wanted to hand her a finished thing, not a suspicion.
That was not how he usually operated. Usually, he told Damon everything and decided fast. Usually, he trusted his people until they proved he couldn’t. Usually, he did not sit on a problem because a woman with three cracked ribs might sleep better if he did.
He had Garrett pull the access logs for Dr. Walsh’s patient registration system. Every terminal. Every login. Every name searched in the last seventy-two hours.
It took six hours. Garrett came back with a single name.
Marcus.
Rhett read the report three times.
Marcus — his chief of staff. The man who had been with him for nine years. The man who had pulled Isa’s address from HR without asking why, who had anticipated the phone, who had told him about the gate camera, who had told him, twenty minutes before he needed it, that something was wrong.
Marcus.
Rhett sat at his desk with the report in front of him and did not move for a long time. He thought about the fact that Marcus had told him — had volunteered — that he’d checked the phone four times in twenty minutes. He thought about how that had felt: like being known. Like being seen.
It had also been a confession dressed up as loyalty. He understood that now. Marcus had been telling him something, and Rhett had been too moved by it to hear it.
He called Marcus in.
Marcus came in the way he always did — quiet, unhurried, standing just inside the door with his hands folded in front of him. He saw the report on the desk and did not look at it.
“Sit down,” Rhett said.
“I’ll stand, sir.”
Rhett looked at him for a long moment.
“How long?” he said.
Marcus’s face did not change. That was the worst part. He had known this was coming, and he had made his peace with it, and he was not going to insult Rhett by pretending otherwise.
“Four months,” he said.
“Money?”
“Debt. Gambling. My brother-in-law got in with the wrong people and I tried to cover it and it got out of hand.” He said it flatly, without self-pity. “Draven’s people found out. They offered to make it go away.”
“And in return?”
“Information. Small things at first. Shipment windows. Meeting locations. Nothing that would hurt anyone.” He paused. “Then he asked about her.”
Rhett’s voice stayed level. “And you gave her to him.”
“I gave him a name in a database.” Marcus’s jaw worked. “That’s all I let myself think it was. A name. I told myself she was just a housekeeper and he was her family and it wasn’t my business what happened between them.”
“And the address?”
“Not from me. The registration had her address attached to it. I didn’t know that until after.” He met Rhett’s eyes for the first time. “I swear to you, sir. I didn’t know that until after.”
Rhett stood up and walked around the desk. He stood in front of Marcus and looked at him the way he had looked at many men over many years, and Marcus did not flinch, and did not beg, and did not offer him anything.
“You told me she was hurt,” Marcus said quietly. “You told me she had three cracked ribs and a man who’d done it twice.” He swallowed. “I’ve been sick about it for two days. That’s not an excuse. I just want you to know it’s true.”
Rhett was silent for a long moment.
“You know what I have to do,” he said.
“I do.”
“Get your things. You’ll be driven to a property upstate. You’ll stay there until this is finished. After that, I’ll decide.” He paused. “You won’t be hurt. You won’t be touched. But you won’t leave, and you won’t have a phone, and you won’t speak to anyone until I say otherwise.”
Marcus nodded slowly. He turned toward the door. Then he stopped.
“Sir. He doesn’t want her back because he loves her.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t understand.” Marcus turned around. “The thing he actually wants — the thing he’s been building toward for six years — is a reason to come at you that doesn’t cost him his legitimacy. He needs the other families to see him as the wronged party. And now he has it. A sister he’s been searching for, a man who took her in and won’t give her back, a boyfriend who put his hands on her and disappeared. Every part of that story is already written.” He held Rhett’s eyes. “He didn’t come for her. He came for you. She’s just the page he’s writing it on.”
Rhett stood very still.
“Get in the car, Marcus,” he said.
Marcus went.
And when the door closed, Rhett stood alone in his study and understood that he had two days, maybe three, before Victor Draven made his move — and that the move would not be at the gate, and would not be on the street, and would not be anything he could watch on a monitor.
May you like
It would be a room full of men who called themselves families, and a story, and a choice.
He went upstairs to tell Isa the truth.
