Chapter 14 - Patrick’s Last Order
Nobody spoke until the recording ended.
Patrick Hale had been dying.
Pancreatic cancer.
Aggressive.
Untreatable.
He told almost no one.
But illness wasn’t why he arranged his death.
Mateo had infiltrated everything.
Police.
Courts.
Lakefront.
The Hale organization.
Patrick believed a public war was coming.
If he died naturally, Mateo would quietly absorb his network.
If Patrick died violently and Elias Vane appeared responsible, everyone would look in the wrong direction while Catherine secured the archive and Declan disappeared.
It worked.
Too well.
Elias became a hunted man.
I became a crime boss trying to avenge Patrick.
Mateo grew stronger.
And every lie created another.
“You could have told me,” I said.
Elias nodded.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because by the time you were old enough to hear it, you had become exactly what Patrick feared.”
That hurt because it was true.
I had built my life around avenging violence by becoming better at violence.
Brin touched my arm.
Not forgiveness.
Not yet.
But contact.
Then Miriam arrived with federal agents.
Mateo was in custody.
Yara had agreed to cooperate.
Lakefront’s archives were secured.
It sounded like an ending.
I had stopped believing in those.
“What about the video from the garage?” Brin asked.
Everyone turned.
Right.
The man threatening her.
Mateo denied sending him.
Yara insisted she had only ordered Brin followed and pressured.
Ugly.
But not attempted murder.
Federal technicians enhanced the audio.
The voice belonged to neither Mateo nor his known men.
Then security footage from another garage camera was recovered.
The threatening man’s face appeared.
Adrian Vale went completely still.
“You know him?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“My chief of security.”
I turned toward my biological father.
“Your man threatened Brin?”
“I didn’t order it.”
I almost laughed.
Apparently denial was hereditary.
Adrian immediately called his security network.
No answer.
The man’s name was Malcolm Reeve.
He had worked for Adrian for eighteen years.
Then Royce found something.
Malcolm had visited Chicago repeatedly over the last year.
Not to see Adrian.
To meet Patrick Hale’s former accountant.
And Rafael—Mateo—Salcedo.
Three separate factions.
One man connecting all of them.
“Why?” Brin asked.
Miriam answered.
“Money.”
But I didn’t believe it.
Neither did Brin.
We returned to the gray folder.
The brass key.
The guardianship.
The phone.
The paternity report.
Brin had prepared everything carefully.
“What haven’t you told me?” I asked.
She looked at me.
“One thing.”
Of course.
“Three weeks ago, Malcolm came to my apartment.”
My body tightened.
“He didn’t threaten me.”
“What did he do?”
“He gave me the gray folder.”
Silence.
“That folder came from Malcolm?”
“He told me to put my evidence inside and leave it at the hospital.”
“Why?”
“He said if anything happened, you would need to see everything before your family buried the truth again.”
Adrian looked disturbed.
That interested me.
“What?”
He didn’t answer.
Brin did.
“Malcolm said Cormack wasn’t the target.”
I looked at her.
“Who was?”
“Our baby.”
Then every phone in the chapel buzzed simultaneously.
Emergency alert from maternity security.
Unauthorized access.
I ran.
The nursery doors were open.
Guards unconscious but alive.
Our son’s bassinet was empty.
Brin screamed.
On the mattress lay one object.
The unexplained ankle bracelet.
Its serial number had changed.
Royce read it aloud.
Adrian went white.
“What?”
I grabbed him.
“What does that number mean?”
He stared at the empty bassinet.
“It’s not an account number.”
“Then what?”
May you like
His voice dropped.
“It’s coordinates.”
