Chapter 44 Genevieve
Genevieve
The tavern is dark when I get there.
It’s just past midnight, and the building is closed, the front doors locked, the parking lot empty.
I know this because I spent over a year memorizing this building’s rhythms without even meaning to.
Monday nights, the tavern closes at ten.
The kitchen staff leaves by eleven. The cleaning crew is gone by midnight.
After that, the Round Table is a ghost. Any other night, that’s when the Lye comes alive. But Mondays is for rest.
Paxton wanted to send someone with me. Roman volunteered. I said no.
I know this building. I know which floorboards creak and which doors stick. I know the alarm code because Art gave it to me months ago and never thought to change it, and I know the spare key is under the third planter by the side entrance because Rosalie told me once when she locked herself out.
I’m not sending someone who doesn’t know these things into a building that sits on top of an underground criminal empire.
The side entrance opens without a sound. I punch in the alarm code with steady fingers, and when the panel blinks green, I exhale.
The tavern smells the same. Wood polish and beer. The bar is wiped down, the stools are up, and the only light comes from the exit signs casting everything in a dim red glow.
Art’s office is at the end of the hallway, past the storage room with the secret entrance, past the back hallway with another Lye entrance, and to the left of the bathroom that always had a leak.
I test each step with the ball of my foot before committing my weight. The building settles around me with the quiet groans old structures make at night, and every one of them sounds like a threat.
The hallway is dark. I use my phone as a flashlight, keeping it pointed at the floor.
The office door is unlocked. Of course it is.
Art locks the desk but not the door, because Art has always trusted the wrong things.
He trusts buildings and names and the power of being a Penngrove.
He doesn’t trust people, which is why he never told me the truth, and he doesn’t trust himself, which is why he let his father and Brutus and everyone else make his choices for him.
I slip inside and close the door behind me.
The desk is the same. The brass key is still taped under the lip, right where I found it the first time. My fingers feel it in the dark, and I peel it off and fit it into the lock.
Click.
The drawer slides open, and my heart pounds in my ears.
The manila folder is gone. But the hard drive is still there, shoved toward the back, the sticky note with Backup still attached.
I let out a shaky exhale and pick it up. It’s heavier than I remember, or maybe that’s just the weight of what it carries. Of what I need it to carry. Every fight. Every coerced match. Every person who was trapped in that cage and forced to bleed for someone else’s profit.
Six years of Lance’s life are potentially in my hands.
I slip it into the inside pocket of my jacket and close the drawer. Lock it. Press the key back into place under the lip of the desk.
I’m halfway to the door when the light turns on. I jerk back, my hand shooting to my throat, and my stomach dropping to the floor.
Art is standing in the doorway.
He looks terrible. His hair is unwashed, his shirt is wrinkled, and there are dark circles under his eyes that tell me he hasn’t slept in days. He’s holding a glass of something amber, and his hand isn’t steady.
“Ginny.”
My heart slams against my ribs so hard it hurts.
“Art.”
His eyes drop to my jacket, to the pocket where the hard drive is making a barely visible bulge, and then back to my face.
“What are you doing in my office?”
I could lie. I could tell him I came back for my things, or that I forgot something, or that I’m here for him and I’m sorry. But I’m so tired of lying, just as I’m sure he’s so tired of being lied to, and we’ve been doing this dance for so long and enough is enough.
“I’m taking something that doesn’t belong to you,” I say.
“From my desk.”
“From Freddy’s desk. You just inherited it along with everything else you didn’t earn.”
The words land harder than I meant them to. Or maybe I do mean it. My feelings when it comes to him are complicated.
He takes a sip of his drink. His jaw works, and he sways.
“So you and Lance,” he says. “How long?”
“Art…”
“How long, Ginny?”
I press my lips together. “Long enough.”
“Before or after the engagement?”
“Before.”
He nods. Slow. Like he already knew and just needed to hear me say it.
“I saw you two. At the Calloway estate.” He laughs, but it’s hollow. “You know, my father told me. He said you weren’t worth the trouble. Said you’d end up being a liability. I defended you. I told him he was wrong.”
“Your father doesn’t know me.”
“Neither did I, apparently.”
“You never tried.” The anger surfaces before I can stop it. “You kept me in the dark about everything. You moved me here like property, you hid me from your father, you put Lance in a cage and ordered him to lose, and you want to stand here and act like I’m the one who betrayed this relationship?”
“I was trying to protect you!”
“By tricking me into moving here?”
He shakes his head.
“That’s what it was, right? Freddy bringing you to Boston. Dinners with my dad. You being charming. It was all a set up.”
“At first,” he says. “But then I got to know you. Then I loved you, and you fucking played me.”
“You were trying to protect yourself. That’s all you’ve ever done.”
He flinches.
“Lance spent six years in that cage, Art. Six years. And you knew. You knew, and you let it happen because it was easier than standing up to people.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know exactly what I’m talking about. I lived in your world for over a year. I watched you smile for cameras and shake hands and play the people’s prince while the person who loved you most was bleeding for your sins.”
“He’s my best friend.”
“Then act like it!”
The words echo off the walls. Art’s glass trembles in his hand.
“She took him,” I say, and my voice drops because the anger is giving way to something else.
“Beverly. Cassandra. Whatever you want to call her. She showed up in Boston with armed men and she took him, and he went willingly because she had guns pointed at me and my father and he’s so used to sacrificing himself for everyone else that he didn’t even hesitate. ”
Art’s face changes. The bitterness drains out of it, replaced by something I haven’t seen on him in a long time. Something that looks like the man I fell in love with all those moons ago.
“Bevie? She’s still alive?”
“She’s alive. And she’s been running everything. Brutus, the Lye, Freddy, all of it. She’s Myrddin’s sister, Art. She played everyone. For years, and for God knows why.”
He sets the glass down on the desk. His hand is shaking.
“And Lance is with her now.”
“Lance traded himself so my father and I could walk out of that brownstone alive. Because that’s what he does. He throws himself into the fire so nobody else has to burn.”
His eyes go glossy and a tear spills over. He wipes it away and sniffs.
“Tell me what’s on this, Art.” I pull the hard drive from my jacket. “Tell me it is what I think it is. Tell me you held your best friend’s blackmail in your hands and chose to keep him down there so you wouldn’t have to man up and face your shit.”
He downs the rest of his drink and stares at the ground. “Everything. Every fight. Every match. Every hit job. And not just his.”
Relief pours through me. I can do this. I just have to convince him to let me leave.
“I’m taking this with me.”
He stares at me for a long time. The silence stretches until I can hear the building settling and my own blood pounding and the ice shifting in his emptied glass.
“You really love him,” he says.
“Yes.”
“And he loves you.”
“Yes.”
His face crumples. Not the way it happens in movies. It’s quieter than that. Like he’s realizing the life he thought he was building has been a house of cards, and the wind just blew.
“You know what the worst part is?” he says. “I think part of me always knew he was in love with you. From the first night I brought you into this place. The way he looked at you. He’d never looked at anyone like that…not even me.”
My chest aches, because underneath everything, underneath the lies and the cowardice and the cage, Art loved Lance. Maybe not the right way. Maybe not enough to save him. But he loved him in the only way he’s ever known love. Selfishly.
“Art, I need you to let me walk out of here.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you’re exactly what your father raised you to be.”
He steps back, his shoulders hitting the doorframe, and his face goes white.
I see it land. It cracks through every wall he’s built, every excuse he’s made, every time he told himself he was different from Franklin Penngrove.
“I loved you,” he says. “I know it doesn’t look like it. I know I did everything wrong. But I loved you, Ginny. And I loved him.”
“I know.” My throat is so tight I can barely speak. “That’s what makes this all so goddamn sad.”
He steps aside. “Go.”
The doorway is open. He’s not blocking it anymore. He’s just standing there, looking broken, with an empty glass and the ghost of a life that was never really his.
I walk past him. Our shoulders almost touch.
“Ginny.”
I stop but don’t turn around.
“I’m sorry.”
“Me, too.” I nod once. And then I’m down the stairs and through the side door and into the cold night air, and the hard drive is pressed against my ribs like a second heartbeat, and I’m running.