Chapter 2 - The Brothers at the Gate
The first sound after Grant’s promise was the low roar of engines.
Three black SUVs swept into the circular driveway less than twenty minutes later. Even through the basement walls, I heard brakes, doors, shouting, the sharp burst of male voices used to being obeyed. Phoebe had stopped crying by then, though she still trembled against me every time footsteps passed the door.
I pressed the torn edge of my dress against her forehead and kept my breathing slow.
“Are Uncle Grant and the others really coming?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“All of them?”
“Yes, baby.”
Her small fingers tightened around mine. “Then Daddy’s in trouble.”
I should not have smiled.
But I did.
The basement door burst open so hard it struck the wall.
Grant was first through it.
At six-foot-four, in a dark coat still unbuttoned from the drive, my eldest brother looked less like the head of Walton Capital and more like a man barely holding himself together. Roman, Dean, Luke, and Bennett flooded in behind him. I hadn’t seen them together in six years. For a second I saw all of us as children—wild, loud, inseparable—before pain dragged me back into the present.
Grant saw Phoebe’s bandaged head, the torn ribbon at my wrists, the welts burning across my back beneath the shredded dress.
Something in his face died.
“Heather,” he said, and that one word carried grief, guilt, and fury all at once.
I tried to stand.
Roman crossed the room in two strides and caught me before my knees gave out. “Easy.”
Luke dropped beside Phoebe and checked her pupils with the flashlight from his phone. He had become an emergency physician while I was gone. His expression went frighteningly blank.
“She needs stitches,” he said. “Now.”
“And Heather?” Grant asked without looking away from me.
Luke’s jaw flexed. “Hospital. Immediately.”
Behind them, Russell appeared at the top of the basement stairs with two security men and Gwendolyn at his side. He seemed genuinely offended by the scene.
“What the hell is this?” he demanded. “You people don’t get to storm into my house.”
Grant turned slowly.
I had seen my oldest brother negotiate billion-dollar acquisitions with less calm than the one he used now.
“You whipped my sister thirty times,” he said. “You locked her in a basement. Your daughter is bleeding. If you say one more word before I decide whether to call the police or bury you in civil court, I promise you’ll regret it.”
Russell laughed once—thin, reckless, disbelieving. “Your sister?”
Gwendolyn’s eyes flicked to me, then to Grant, and for the first time uncertainty entered her face.
“Yes,” Grant said. “Heather Walton. My sister.”
The silence that followed felt alive.
Russell looked at me as if seeing a stranger where his obedient wife had been standing moments earlier. “Walton,” he repeated.
Roman stepped between us, blocking his view. “You don’t say her name.”
Phoebe lifted her head from my shoulder. “Uncle Grant,” she whispered.
That did it.
Grant bent, kissed her hair, and then stood again with murder in his eyes.
Two paramedics hurried in behind Bennett, followed by private security from the Walton estate. While Luke helped them lift Phoebe, Dean draped his coat over my shoulders to cover my torn dress. I saw the bodyguard near the door lower his eyes in shame.
Then, as the paramedics turned to carry Phoebe up the stairs, the bodyguard made a choice.
He stepped forward and pressed a small flash drive into Grant’s hand.
“There’s a camera feed backed up from the basement,” he muttered. “And another from the service corridor at the hotel.”
Grant’s fingers closed around it.
Russell went pale.
May you like
“What’s on it?” I asked.
The man swallowed. “Enough,” he said, “to ruin them.”
