Chapter 24
Izzy
"He has what your father was building. Before he died."
Wesley's words echo in my head as I drive through Lower Manhattan, knuckles white on the steering wheel.
I don't need more proof that Matthew killed Dad. I have Mother's confession recorded. I have the yacht footage showing Matthew on the boat the night before the explosion. I have the wire transfer to Olegov, the joint Cayman account, enough evidence to bury them both.
But Gerald Hartman claims he has something different. Something Dad himself was gathering before Matthew silenced him.
I finally agree to meet with Gerald—Dad's old business partner, who’s been calling nonstop for weeks. He wants to meet somewhere public, he said. Safe.
The diner he chose sits wedged between a bodega and a laundromat, neon sign flickering OPEN in grimy windows. Not exactly the Four Seasons, but I guess when you're terrified someone wants you dead, ambiance isn't a priority.
I park two blocks away, like Sergei taught me. Always give yourself multiple exit routes. Always keep your head up. Always assume someone's watching.
Always assume you're the target.
My phone buzzes. Sergei, checking in for the third time in an hour.
Where are you?
Meeting Gerald. The diner on Canal Street.
Three dots appear, disappear, appear again.
Not alone.
Then another message: Wasn't a question, kotyonok. Wait for me.
I stare at the message. Part of me wants to listen, to be the good wife who waits for her dangerous husband to handle things.
But the part that's been training for weeks, the part that can now hit center mass at twenty feet and knows six different ways to break someone's wrist—that part is done waiting.
I'm already here. I'll be careful.
I silence my phone before he can argue.
The diner smells like burnt coffee and decades of grease. Gerald's in the back booth, exactly where he said he'd be. He looks like hell—grey skin, sunken eyes, hands shaking around his mug. He is the same age as Dad's was, fifty-five, but right now he could pass for seventy.
"Isabelle." Relief floods his face. "Thank God. I wasn't sure you'd come."
"You said you had documents." I slide into the booth, positioning myself so I can see both exits. "About the embezzlement. About what my father discovered."
"I know you've been building your own case." Gerald's eyes flick to the door, then back. "Wesley's good—he found the murder payment, the yacht footage. But I have what Richard was gathering. The paper trail he was following before they stopped him."
He pulls a manila envelope from inside his coat.
"They weren't just planning to kill him, Isabelle. They'd been stealing from Davenport Holdings for years. Skimming profits, hiding money offshore, funneling funds through shell companies. Your father discovered the discrepancies two weeks before the explosion."
Two weeks. The same timeline Mother mentioned—Dad finding out about the affair, the finances, everything unraveling at once.
"How much?" My voice sounds hollow.
"Tens of millions over fifteen years. Maybe more." He pushes the envelope across the scarred Formica. "This is what got him killed. Not just the affair. The money. He was building a case to take to the board, to the authorities. He was going to expose everything."
I open the envelope. Page after page of financial documents—transfers, invoices, account statements. Dad's handwriting in the margins, his meticulous notes connecting dots, following the money.
He knew. He knew, and he was trying to stop them.
And they killed him for it.
"Richard gave me copies a week before he died," Gerald continues. "Told me if anything happened to him, I should get these to you. But then Matthew's people started watching me. Following me. I got scared. Went into hiding. Figured if I stayed quiet, they'd leave me alone."
"But they didn't."
"They killed every person who could testify against them.
The mechanic who planted the bomb in Elena's car.
Ivan Olegov. Anyone with direct knowledge.
" His hands shake harder around his mug.
"I'm the last one, Isabelle. The last person with physical evidence of the embezzlement.
That's why I called. I can't run anymore.
Can't hide. So I'm giving this to you, and then I'm disappearing.
New identity. New life. Let me walk away and everything your father built—everything he was trying to protect—is yours. "
I stare at Dad's handwriting. His careful notes. His desperate attempt to save his company from the people bleeding it dry.
This was never just about an affair. This was about money. Power. Control.
Matthew didn't kill Dad because of Mother. He killed Dad because Dad was about to expose years of theft and fraud. The affair was just the accelerant. The money was the motive.
"The police need to see this," I say. "Detective Fraser. He's been building a case—"
"No police." Gerald shakes his head violently. "Not yet. Matthew has people everywhere. Judges, prosecutors, cops on the take. You go to them now, before you have everything locked down, and this evidence disappears. You disappear."
"Then what do you suggest?"
"Use it strategically. Wesley knows how.
Build an airtight case that Matthew's lawyers can't wriggle out of.
Get your mother on record—she knows where more bodies are buried, literally and figuratively.
And when you have everything, when there's no way they can escape, you burn them publicly.
Humiliate them. Destroy them so completely, they can never rebuild. "
His voice drops, urgent and terrified.
"That's what Richard would've wanted. Not just justice—complete annihilation. He was so tired of these people thinking they were above consequences. He wanted them to feel what it was like to lose everything."
Dad. Gentle, principled Dad, who believed in charity and second chances and helping those who couldn't help themselves.
He wanted to destroy them, too.
Maybe I'm more like him than I thought.
Movement catches my eye. It’s the young server from earlier, approaching our table with the coffee pot. Wrong. His walk is too purposeful, too focused. His eyes don't match his nervous demeanor from before.
Sergei's training kicks in. The hair on the back of my neck rises.
"Gerald." I keep my voice level. "When did you arrive at this diner?"
"Twenty minutes before you. Why?"
"Did you tell anyone you were meeting me here? Anyone at all?"
His face goes grey. "My assistant. She booked the car service. But she's been with me for years—"
"That server. The one who seated you. What did he look like?"
Gerald's eyes widen with terrible understanding. "Young. Nervous. Said he was new."
The server reaches our table. His hand goes inside his jacket.
"Get down!"
Everything happens at once. I shove Gerald sideways, my chair toppling as I hit the floor. I catch a flash of silver—a knife, not a gun—as the server lunges. Women scream. Glass shatters. Then I'm moving, hand finding the gun Sergei made me carry, safety off.
The knife slashes down toward Gerald. He screams, blood spraying from his arm as he throws himself backward. The server pivots toward me, blade raised, and I don't think. Don't hesitate.
I fire.
The shot catches him in the shoulder—not where I aimed, center mass, but close enough. He spins, knife clattering to the tile, and crashes into a table. Food and dishes explode everywhere.
A second man bursts through the kitchen door. I recognize the type—dark clothes, dead eyes, professional. Matthew's cleanup crew, here to silence the last witness.
Gerald's on the floor, clutching his bleeding arm. I put myself between him and the second attacker, gun raised, hands steadier than they have any right to be.
"Stay back."
The man keeps coming. He's got a gun now, raising it toward me, and I know with cold certainty that I'm about to find out if Sergei's training was enough.
The diner's front window explodes inward.
Sergei comes through the shattered glass like something out of a nightmare, moving faster than should be possible. He slams into the second attacker before the man can fire, driving him back into the kitchen with brutal efficiency. I hear struggling, a gunshot muffled by distance, then silence.
"Izzy!" Sergei's voice, urgent. "Status?"
"I'm okay. Gerald's hurt—knife wound to the arm." I'm already moving toward him, keeping my gun trained on the server I shot. He's not getting up, shoulder wound bleeding freely, but I'm not taking chances. "First attacker's down. Non-fatal."
Sergei emerges from the kitchen, wiping blood from his hands. Not his blood. His grey eyes sweep the diner—terrified customers cowering under tables, the wounded server groaning, Gerald slumped against the booth.
"We need to move. Now. Cops are coming."
"Gerald has documents. Evidence of the embezzlement." I grab the manila envelope, still clutched in Gerald's good hand. "We need to get him out of here."
"He's not coming with us." Sergei's voice is cold. Clinical. "He's a liability. Too many people saw him, saw us. If he comes, he leads Matthew straight to our door."
"I can't just leave him—"
Gerald grabs my arm with his good hand. "He's right.
Go. Take the documents. Get justice for Richard.
" His eyes are clearer now, pain cutting through the fear.
"I'll be fine. I've got a backup plan. Another identity waiting.
Just... make them pay, Isabelle. Make them pay for what they took from us. "
I stare at him—this man who was my father's friend, who kept evidence hidden for months, who's now bleeding in a bombed-out diner because he finally tried to do the right thing.
"Thank you." It's not enough. Nothing would be enough. "For keeping these safe. For calling me."
"Richard believed in you." Gerald manages a weak smile. "So do I."
Sergei's hand closes around my arm. "We're out of time."
I let him pull me toward the shattered window, with Gerald's envelope clutched against my chest. Behind us, sirens wail closer.
The server I shot is being helped by a waitress, and part of me—the part that still remembers being the Davenport heiress who'd never fired a gun—wants to stop.
Wants to help. Wants to pretend I'm still that person.
But I'm not.
I'm the woman who just shot an assassin to protect evidence of her father's murder. I'm the wife of a man who kills without hesitation. I'm the mother of a child who deserves a world where people like Matthew Ashford face consequences.
I'm done being the victim.
Sergei's SUV is where he left it, two blocks from the diner. We pile in and he floors it, tires screeching as we merge into traffic. Behind us, police cars converge on the street we just left.
"You followed me." My voice sounds distant, shocked.
"Of course I followed you." He takes a corner too fast, the SUV's weight shifting. "You think I'd let you walk into a meeting with your father's business partner alone? After everything that's happened?"
"I told you I'd be careful."
"And I told you I didn't believe you." His jaw is granite. "You were almost killed, Isabelle. If I'd been thirty seconds later—"
"But you weren't." I reach across the console, finding his hand. His fingers are still smeared with blood, but I don't care. "You were there. Like you always are."
His grip tightens on mine. "The documents. What do they show?"
"Everything." I open the envelope, scanning pages with shaking hands. "Fifteen years of embezzlement. Tens of millions funneled through shell companies. And Dad's own notes—he was building a case. Was about to expose them when Matthew decided he had to die."
"Motive."
"Complete motive. This wasn't about the affair.
This wasn't about Mother. This was about money.
" I look at the evidence spread across my lap—my father's handwriting, his careful documentation, his attempt to save his company from parasites.
"Matthew killed Dad to protect his fortune. Everything else was just cover."
"And your mother?"
"Knew about the embezzlement. Participated in it. Her signature's on half these transfers." I flip through pages, each one another nail in Catherine Davenport's coffin. "She wasn't just complicit in the affair. She was his partner. In everything."
The city blurs past the windows. My hands won't stop shaking, but it's not fear anymore.
It's rage.
"Wesley needs to see these immediately," I say. "We need copies. Backups. Multiple locations. If Matthew's willing to kill to keep this quiet—"
"He's willing to do worse." Sergei's eyes meet mine briefly before returning to the road. "But so are we. And now we have everything we need to destroy him."
I stare at Dad's notes. His handwriting, so familiar it makes my chest ache. His meticulous mind, working to protect the company he built, the legacy he wanted to leave.
He never got to finish.
But I will.
"The gala," I say quietly. "That's when we do it. Matthew will be there. Mother, too. All of Manhattan watching."
"Are you sure?"
"Positive." I close the envelope, pressing it against my chest like armor. "Dad wanted complete annihilation. He wanted them to feel what it's like to lose everything."
I look at Sergei—blood on his hands, violence in his past, the most dangerous man I've ever known.
My husband.
My partner.
My Wolf.
"I'm going to give them exactly what they deserve."