Chapter 42 Genevieve
Genevieve
The door is still hanging off its hinges.
Cold air seeps through the gap where the lock used to be, and I’m on the kitchen floor with my back against the cabinet and my father’s arms around me.
I don’t remember how I got here. I don’t remember the men leaving or Cassandra’s heels clicking down the stoop or the car pulling away.
I just remember the sound of my own voice screaming Lance’s name and then nothing, like someone pulled the plug on the world and left me in the dark.
My dad holds me the way he did when I was small.
One hand on the back of my head, the other pressed flat between my shoulder blades, his chin resting on top of my hair.
He doesn’t say anything. He just breathes, steady and slow, and I match my lungs to his because mine don’t seem to know how to work on their own anymore.
The coq au vin is still on the stove. The wineglasses are still on the table. Lance’s chair is pushed back at the angle he left it, and his jacket is draped over the armrest because he didn’t have time to grab it before he walked out the door and into whatever hell is waiting for him.
I stare at that jacket until my eyes burn.
“Genevieve.” My father’s voice is rough. “Look at me.”
I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want to look at anything except that jacket and the ghost of the man who was wearing it an hour ago.
“Mon chou. Please.”
I lift my head.
His face isn’t the careful composure he’s been wearing all night, not the lawyer mask or the protective father routine. He looks like a man who just watched someone walk into a fire and couldn’t stop it.
“We’re going to get him back,” he says.
“How?” The word scrapes out of me like sandpaper. “She has him. She has armed men and money and an operation that’s been running for decades, and we have what? A half-built FBI case and a hard drive that might not even be where I think it is?”
“We have the case. We have my testimony. And if that footage exists, we have the kill shot.”
“And what about Lance?” My voice breaks. “What happens to him when the FBI sees that footage? He’s on it, Papa. Every fight, every person he’s hurt. They could charge him. They could put him in prison for the rest of his life.”
My father takes my hands. His grip is firm, his fingers cold, but steady.
“Listen to me very carefully, because this is important. What Lance has been subjected to is, by legal definition, forced labor and human trafficking under federal law. He was recruited as a teenager through a position of trust. He was coerced through threats of violence against himself and the people he loves. He was held in that operation through blackmail and the threat of criminal exposure for acts he was forced to commit.”
“But he killed people.”
“Under duress. There’s a legal distinction between a willing participant and a coerced one, and that distinction is the difference between a defendant and a victim.
The footage doesn’t incriminate Lance. It exonerates him.
It proves the operation existed, it proves the coercion, and it proves he was a victim of a system designed to trap him. ”
“You’re sure?”
“Genevieve, I’ve spent my entire career defending people in situations like this. Some of them deserved it. Some of them didn’t. Lance didn’t. And I will use every tool I have to make sure the law sees him the way you and I do.”
A sob works its way up my throat, and I press my fist against my mouth to hold it in.
“I won’t leave him unprotected,” my father says.
“The moment you get that footage to me, I’ll have it in the hands of the federal prosecutors building this case, and I will personally ensure that Lance Calloway is classified as a cooperating victim, not a coconspirator.
I’ve walked this line before. I know how to do it. ”
“What if it’s not enough?”
“It will be enough.” His voice doesn’t waver.
“What if I can’t find it?”
That panic funnels in, dimming my vision.
“You will,” he says. “Between my testimony, the financial records the FBI already has, and physical evidence of the operation, we’ll have a RICO case no prosecutor in this country would walk away from. The people who did this to him will go down. And Lance will walk out.”
I search his face for doubt. But there’s nothing. Just the same steady certainty he had when he told me the moon would never come, and it did, and he was already working to fix it.
“I have to go back to Rosebrook,” I say.
“Yes. I know.”
“The footage is in Art’s office. A black hard drive with backup on it. I held it in my hands weeks ago and didn’t know what it was. At least, I have to hope that’s what it is.”
“And you know how to get to it?”
“I know that building better than anyone.” I swallow. “I worked there for months. I know every back room, every blind spot, every exit. I know when it’s empty and I know when it’s not.”
My father studies me. The same careful assessment he gave Lance when we first walked in, only now it’s pointed at me, and I can see him fighting two instincts: the lawyer who knows this is the right play and the father who wants to lock me in this brownstone and never let me leave.
“You’ll need help,” he says.
“Lance has family in Rosebrook. People who didn’t know what was happening but who will move when they find out.”
“The Calloways.”
“Paxton. Juliette. They love him. And Paxton has resources.”
My father nods slowly. “I’ll work the FBI from here. The moment I have word they’re ready to move, I’ll let you know. But Genevieve, the footage has to come first. Without it, the case is strong but not airtight. With it, it’s bulletproof.”
“I’ll get it.”
“I know you will.” He cups my face in both hands, and his palms are rough and cold and they smell like thyme from the coq au vin, and I lean into them because this might be the last time I stand in this kitchen.
“You are the bravest person I’ve ever known,” he says. “And I’m not just saying that because you’re my daughter.”
“You’re biased.”
“Extremely. Doesn’t make it less true.”
“Papa, if something goes wrong—”
“Nothing is going to go wrong.”
“But if it does. If…if Cassandra was lying, or they know you go back to the Feds…”
He pulls me into his chest. I press my face against his shirt and breathe him in, coffee and the ghost of wine sauce, and I count.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.
“I love you, Genevieve. Always and in all ways,” he whispers.
“Always and in all ways.”
When I pull back, I’m steady.
He helps me fix the front door as best we can, propping it closed and securing the chain. He packs me food I won’t eat and presses cash into my hands and makes me program the burner phone number into mine twice, because he’s a father and that’s what fathers do.
At the door, he holds my face one more time.
I kiss his cheek. Walk down the steps past the dead lavender and the iron railing and get into the car Lance drove here.
The engine turns over. The headlights cut through the dark.
And I drive.
I don’t stop except for gas, and even then I’m in and out in under five minutes.
Every mile that passes feels like a countdown, every highway sign a reminder that Lance is somewhere in Boston being held by a woman who spent over twenty years pretending to love him, and I’m driving in the wrong direction.
But the wrong direction is the only direction that leads to saving him.
I replay Cassandra’s words on a loop. The calm in her voice. The way she called him child like she still had the right. The way she catalogued his skills like items on an inventory list. I built you. I shaped you. You were always mine.
He’s not hers. He was never hers. He’s a man who makes terrible coffee and teaches his dog to shake with the wrong paw and loves so deeply but feels like he doesn’t deserve it.
And she stole him from me in the same kitchen where his plate is still sitting on the table.
By the time I reach Rosebrook Falls, the sun is up. The town looks the same as it did when I first arrived months ago, quaint and picturesque, with cute brick storefronts and tree-lined streets and the kind of charm that makes you believe nothing bad could happen here.
I know better now.
I don’t go to the cabin. I don’t go to the tavern. I don’t go anywhere near Art or anyone connected to the Lye.
I go to Montgomery Manor.
And I demand to be let inside.