Chapter 7 - The Price of Leaving.
I replayed the whisper until I could no longer deny it.
My father's voice had grown older, but it was his.
“Thomas Bennett is alive,” Luka said.
I struck him across the face.
He accepted the blow without defending himself.
“How long have you known?”
“I suspected he survived.”
“How long?”
“Thirteen years.”
The number landed harder than any confession Grant had made.
Luka said my father disappeared after stealing the original M-17 ledger.
He allowed the world to believe he had drowned because Morrow threatened to kill me if he testified.
Luka had received coded messages over the years but never a location.
The voice on Grant's call was the first proof that Thomas still lived.
“We take the drive to Grant,” I said.
“He will kill your father and keep the drive.”
“Then give me another choice.”
Miriam copied the files and replaced the drive with a transmitter.
Luka filled its empty space with financial records tying Grant to overseas accounts.
If Grant inspected it quickly, he would believe he had won.
The exchange point was a parking structure beside the river.
I went alone in appearance only.
June stayed with Ava in an armored van two blocks away.
Luka watched from the roof through a rifle scope he promised not to fire near my father.
Grant arrived without Thomas.
Vivian remained inside his car.
“Where is my father?”
“Safe for the moment.”
I held up the drive.
“Then tell me why you did it.”
Grant's expression softened into the face I had loved.
“We were drowning in debt when Morrow approached me.”
“You owned three houses.”
“My family owned them.”
“So you sold me because being rich was not enough.”
“I was supposed to give them access to appointments and medical records.”
“You gave them my body.”
He offered five million dollars, a new identity, and a clean medical history if I surrendered Ava's guardianship.
“She will live in the safest facility in the country.”
“In a laboratory.”
“In a place where her existence has value.”
“She had value when she took her first breath.”
Grant's mask slipped.
“That child is not mine.”
“Then why do you want her?”
“Because I earned what she is worth.”
I threw the decoy drive across the concrete.
The transmitter activated when he caught it.
Luka's men moved at both exits.
Vivian screamed a warning.
Unmarked vans crashed through the barriers before Grant could be taken.
Men in tactical gear flooded the level.
Luka dropped from the roof stairs and covered me with his body as glass shattered across the pavement.
He grunted and fell to one knee.
Blood darkened his sleeve.
A masked man pulled us behind a concrete pillar and fired smoke canisters toward the vans.
He knew Luka's name.
He knew where June was hiding Ava.
When the smoke thickened, he dragged us through a maintenance hatch and sealed it behind us.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
The man removed his mask.
Gray threaded his hair, and a scar divided one eyebrow, but I knew his eyes.
They were the eyes I saw every time I looked in a mirror.
May you like
“You were always terrible at following instructions, little star.”
My dead father stood before me in the dark.
