Chapter 13 - The Estate
No one believed for a second that I was going alone.
We let Russell believe it anyway.
The old Vaughn estate was mostly dark when I arrived just after midnight, the gravel crunching beneath the tires of the unmarked sedan Dean drove while I crouched low in the back. Grant’s team had surrounded the grounds minutes earlier. Law enforcement waited just beyond the perimeter because Naomi insisted, correctly, that private revenge was not a strategy.
I stepped out alone.
At least, that was what Russell was supposed to see.
The chapel light burned weakly. The main house loomed behind it like a memory determined to rot in style. I carried a plain document case in one hand and my phone in the other.
Russell emerged from the front steps.
He looked terrible. Tie gone. Shirt open at the throat. Eyes feverish.
For the first time since I met him, he didn’t even bother pretending to be the better version of himself.
“Where are the records?” he asked.
“Where are the girls?”
He glanced toward the house. “Inside.”
My blood iced.
“Both of them?”
“Yes.”
“Let me see them.”
“You first.”
I raised the case slightly. “You think I brought anything before seeing my daughter?”
He took two steps down. “You ruined everything.”
I almost laughed at the scale of the lie.
“I exposed what you did.”
“You could’ve walked away with money, with custody, with your precious brothers. But no—you had to destroy my company.”
“You beat me with a belt.”
His jaw tightened. “You forced that.”
The words were so monstrous, so effortless, that any last fragment of love still lodged in me died completely.
From inside the house came a child’s cry.
Not Phoebe.
Emma.
Then Phoebe’s voice.
“Mommy!”
I ran.
Russell grabbed for my arm. Before he could reach me, Grant hit him from the side like a storm breaking loose. The two men crashed into the railing. Security flooded the yard. Somewhere behind me I heard shouting, someone yelling “Police!”
I didn’t look back.
I tore through the front door and followed the cries to the old music room.
Phoebe and Emma were inside together.
Phoebe was tied loosely to a chair, furious and terrified at once. Emma was crying on the sofa, clutching a stuffed bear bigger than her torso. Gwendolyn stood by the fireplace with a set of car keys in one hand and a pistol in the other.
My breath stopped.
“So much for alone,” she said.
“You took children,” I said. “Even for you, that’s low.”
Her smile was exhausted. “For me? Heather, I was leaving. Russell lost his mind. I only came back for Emma.”
“Then put the gun down.”
She laughed once. “You still think there’s a clean ending.”
Phoebe saw me and started crying harder. “Mommy, she said Daddy was coming back with matches.”
I turned cold.
“Matches?”
Gwendolyn’s face flickered. “He said if he couldn’t keep the company, the records would burn and everyone could start over.”
The old estate. The chapel. The documents. The proof.
Russell meant to erase the history, not just save himself.
Outside, a window shattered.
Gwendolyn flinched.
That was enough.
I moved.
The gun fired once into the ceiling. Plaster rained down. Emma screamed. I hit Gwendolyn hard at the shoulder just as Dean came through the side door and tackled the weapon from her hand.
Luke rushed in behind him and cut Phoebe loose while I pulled Emma into my arms too because there was no time to sort whose child deserved saving first.
And just as the room filled with police, smoke began rising from the back hallway.
May you like
Russell had found the chapel lanterns.
And he had set the old house on fire.
