Chapter 15 – Lance
Fifteen
War Room Energy
Lance
The penthouse felt like a fucking command center.
Gwen had taken over the dining room. Laptops spread across Atticus's polished mahogany table like digital cancer, cables snaking everywhere, coffee cups forming rings on surfaces that probably cost more than most people's cars.
The late afternoon sun streamed through those floor-to-ceiling windows, casting long shadows across our makeshift war room.
I loved this chaos. Loved working with Gwen like this. I’d missed her.
Morgan was at the co-op with five armed bodyguards. She hadn’t been thrilled about the escort. But like I was going to risk her?
Old times. Practically sharing a brain.
We'd been at it for four hours straight, and my eyes felt like someone had sandblasted them. But this was us, the way we'd always worked best. No bullshit, no pretense. Just two people who'd spent a decade figuring out how to think in tandem.
"Find anything useful, or are we just slowly losing our minds together?" I asked, not looking up from my screen.
"Define useful," Gwen muttered, rubbing her temples in that particular way that meant she was three seconds from throwing her laptop across the room.
"Because I've found about seventeen different ways your grandfather launders money through legitimate businesses, but fuck-all that screams 'slam-dunk prosecution. '"
Same old Gwen. Still swears like a sailor when she's frustrated.
I leaned back in my chair, spine cracking audibly. "Jesus. How does one geriatric sociopath generate this much paperwork?"
"Forty years of practice," she said, fingers flying across her keyboard like she was conducting a digital orchestra. "That's a lot of blood money to make look clean."
The data we'd pulled from my grandfather’s servers was massive, terabytes spanning decades. Financial records, communication logs, operational details. All of it encrypted tighter than Fort Knox and apparently designed to make us question our will to live.
Granddad had trained us both well, me and Hector. Taught us to think like predators, to see patterns others missed, to turn information into weapons.
Too bad I'm using those skills against him now.
But working with Gwen like this?
This is what I missed while playing dead.
We fell into that old rhythm, the comfortable silence punctuated by frustrated sighs and the occasional "found something" that usually turned out to be another dead end. But it felt right. Natural. Like slipping into a familiar jacket that still fits perfectly after years in the closet.
"You know," I said suddenly, the words escaping before I could stop them, "I owe you."
She looked up, eyebrows raised. "For what? Helping you slowly descend into madness, staring at encrypted financial records?"
"For her." The admission scraped out of my throat like gravel. "For taking care of Morgan when I couldn't. When she thought I was dead and I was hiding in the shadows like a fucking coward."
When I watched her fall apart and couldn't do a damn thing about it.
Gwen went still. That particular kind of still that meant I'd just wandered into emotional territory she hadn't expected.
"Lance—"
"No, let me say this." I set my laptop aside, suddenly needing to look at her directly. "I watched her, you know. From a distance. Saw her not eating, sleeping too much, barely functioning. And you were there. Every single day. Holding her together when I couldn't."
When I was too much of a selfish bastard to find another way.
Something shifted in Gwen's expression. "She's my sister," she said simply. "Of course I was there. And you're family too, you absolute moron. We don't abandon family."
Family.
The word still hit different when it came from her. With the DuLacs, family was just another weapon, something to manipulate, control, destroy when it stopped being useful. But Gwen said it like it was fact. Like gravity or the fucking sunrise.
"I know that," I said quietly. "I hated watching her hurt."
Not being able to tell her I was right there, that I'd never really left, that every breath I took was for her.
"You did what you had to do." Gwen's voice was firm, cutting through my self-pity like a blade. "And now we're going to finish this so you never have to make that choice again."
We stared at each other for a moment, ten years of friendship and shared battles hanging in the air between us. Then she smiled, that particular Gwen smile that meant she was about to say something that would either devastate me or make me laugh.
"Besides," she said, "someone had to keep her from doing something spectacularly stupid. Like tracking down your supposed corpse and demanding answers from what was left of your face."
She would have done that, wouldn't she?
"She threatened to dig up my grave," I admitted.
"Of course she did. I had to hide her car keys for a week." Gwen shook her head, but she was grinning now. "Your wife has absolutely zero chill when it comes to you being dead. Or alive, for that matter."
My wife.
The words still made something warm and possessive unfurl in my chest. Morgan was mine. Had been mine from the moment she'd looked at me in that hospital room and decided I was worth forgiving.
"How is she really?" I asked. "I mean, I know she's okay now, but..."
"You mean, how fucked up was she when you were 'dead'?
" Gwen's voice gentled. "Pretty fucked up, Lance.
But she came through it." She leaned forward, expression turning serious.
"But she's not the same. She's stronger, I think.
More sure of herself. But also more guarded.
You hurt her when you left---even if it was to protect her. "
Of course I did. "I know."
"Do you? Because she loves you---God knows why---but she's not going to just roll over and pretend everything's fine because you're back. She's going to make you work for it."
Good.
The thought surprised me with its vehemence. I wanted to work for it. Wanted to prove I deserved her, that I was worth the risk she was taking by staying with me.
"Speaking of working for it," Gwen said, settling back into her chair with renewed focus, "how about we find some actual evidence so you can keep your wife alive long enough to grovel properly?"
Fair point.
We dove back into the files, but something had shifted. The work felt less futile, more... collaborative. Like we were building something instead of just tearing down walls.
I pulled up another set of financial records, this batch from fifteen years ago, right around when my mother died. Ancient history by digital standards, but exactly the timeframe I was hunting.
If she found something, it would be from this period.
"Lance."
Something in Gwen's tone made me look up. She was staring at her screen like it had just grown teeth.
"What?"
"How well do you know your family's European operations?"
About as well as I want to, which is not at all.
"Well enough. Why?"
She spun her laptop around. "Look at these transfer dates. Then look at these news articles I cross-referenced. And I cross- referenced these with people you’ve tried to help over the years."
The screen showed a timeline. Financial transfers on one side, newspaper headlines on the other. My stomach dropped as I saw the correlation.
Transfer. Death. Transfer. Disappearance. Transfer. Accident.
Holy shit.
"How many?" I asked, though I wasn't sure I wanted to know.
"Seventy. That I can verify. All in the past twenty years. All people who were investigating or threatening DuLac’s interests." She met my eyes. “Some are on the list you and Hector gave of people you’ve tried to contact.”
The room felt smaller suddenly. Like the walls were closing in.
"Show me," I said.
For the next hour, Gwen walked me through the pattern.
It was meticulous, thorough, and absolutely fucking damning.
Grandfather had kept detailed records of every operation, every payment to operatives, every cleanup.
Including payments that had my name on them from the years I'd worked to pay restitution for our sins. So many sins.She paused again. “I’m still not seeing anything concrete on Monserratt. Outside of the name of a defunct village near Marseille. Are you sure we don’t have that wrong? ”
“I’m sure. Let’s keep digging.”
Before she could respond, the sound of footsteps interrupted us. Heavy, measured. Familiar.
"That would be Silas," I said, recognizing the cadence.
A moment later, he appeared in the doorway. "I hope you two have been productive."
“Working on it.”
Silas moved to the windows, looking out at the city with the careful posture of a man who'd learned never to fully relax. “How is it going?”
"Honestly, we’d take any help you can give us. Do you have any idea where Lance’s mother would have hidden her files?" Gwen asked.
"That's what I could never figure out. I searched everywhere after she died, her apartment, her office, every safe deposit box. The file had vanished." His voice roughened. "I assumed Charles's people had found it first."
“Does the word Monserrat mean anything to you?” I asked. We needed something to go on. “Maybe Mom visited a small village about thirty minutes from Marseille?”
His brow furrowed. "Unfortunately, no. That doesn’t sound familiar. But I’ll double check. At any rate, Christiane wouldn't have kept something that dangerous in an obvious location. She was trained, just like you. She thought like an operative."
So where would she hide it?
"I've been searching for fifteen years," Silas continued. "Following every lead, checking every contact. Nothing. It was like the file never existed."
"Maybe it didn't," I said, though the words felt wrong.
"No." Silas's voice was certain. "She told me she had everything she needed. She was planning to contact international authorities within the week."
The week she died.
"So where is it?" Gwen asked.
"I don't know. I combed over that site. No files. They weren’t at home either. Or the safe deposit box she set up for the boys."
I thought about the personal effects Silas had recovered from the crash. My mother's jewelry, her personal items. Things that had seemed too precious to lose, too meaningful to lock away.
"We need to look at everything again," I said. "Every piece of jewelry, every personal item. If she hid evidence, it would be somewhere she could access but that wouldn't be obvious."
"Agreed," Silas said. "But Lance... You know what he’ll do. Maybe..." His voice trailed.
I knew what he was saying, that I take Morgan and run. But I couldn’t do that. I didn’t want Morgan looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life.
"I know. But we finish this. Morgan deserves a real life."
Silas moved to the windows, crossing his arms. When he spoke, his voice carried fifteen years of frustration and grief.
"Since your resurrection, Lazarus, I've been following up on leads I should have pursued years ago. Your mother's contacts, the people she trusted." He turned back to face us. "She was building something bigger than any of us realized."
My mother the revolutionary.
Charles had killed her for it. Had made it look like a random event.
"She was systematically documenting every crime, every murder, every act of violence Charles had orchestrated to further his agenda. Her plan was to take it to the family. She didn’t have much faith in the wheels of justice."
And she'd been doing it right under his nose.
Ballsy. Fucking brilliant, but ballsy.
No wonder he’d had her killed. She threatened everything.
"He had her killed before she could use it. There’s no telling what he’ll do now to hold onto his power."
"It doesn’t matter. Morgan isn’t safe unless he’s gone. So, whatever it takes. However many bodies we have to drop to make it happen."
The words came out flat, matter-of-fact. The tone I'd used when accepting contracts, back when killing was just another job.
Gwen went very still beside me. Not afraid, more like she understood that I was more like her husband than she knew. She still had to reconcile that underneath the friend she’d known was someone who'd once been very good at making people disappear.
Still am, when necessary.
Gwen closed her laptop. "I'll need to analyze the personal effects more carefully. Look for hidden compartments, encrypted data, anything that might contain files."
"And I'll reach out to some of my more... specialized contacts," Silas added.
As they gathered their things, preparing to continue the search elsewhere, I found myself staring out at the city lights.
Somewhere out there, my grandfather was planning his next move.
And here I had my wife was trying to live a normal life while assassins hunted the people she loved.
I knew who I would fight to the death to protect.
And somewhere, my mother's final gift to us was waiting to be found.
"Lance," Gwen said softly.
I turned to find her watching me with a peculiar expression.
"What’s up?"
She watched me for a long moment, before standing to wrap me in a tight hug. “I’m still mad at you. But let's find your mother's evidence and destroy your psychotic grandfather so you can get back to your regularly scheduled life of being stupidly in love with my sister."
I squeezed her back, realizing how much I’d missed her. There was a time when we’d been inseparable. “I missed you too.”
“Yeah, whatever,” She said with a smile. "I missed you too, you idiot. working with you. Missed feeling like we were on the same team."
As soon as she and Silas left, my phone buzzed.
Spitfire: How's the research going? Found any smoking guns yet?
I typed back quickly.
Me: Still looking. But we're getting close.
Spitfire: Okay. Let me know if you need help. I love you. Will I see you tonight?
As if I’d miss the chance to hold her to sleep.
Me: Of course. I’ll see you later. Love you too, Spitfire.
It was only then that it hit me. I was finally home. I had my family. And tonight, I would go to sleep holding my wife and pretend the world wasn't trying to kill us.