Chapter 11
Adrian stood at the gates smiling into the camera as if he had come not for me, but for a coat of his I had accidentally forgotten to return.
That smile was more terrifying than a shout.
At least a shout admits that a person has lost control.
But even now, with his mother, the police, and his security detail behind him, and Kyle sitting bound on the floor somewhere in his house with blood on his shirt, Adrian still managed to look composed, expensive, almost sorrowful.
The kind of man whose profile would appear on the news and make half the country say, "Look how well he's holding up.
" The kind of man who spoke of hope for the cameras and sent his wife a photograph of a hostage when no one was watching.
I stared at the screen on the lower level of the guest wing and felt myself begin to shake, not from cold or weakness, but because my old fear remembered the road back to him far too well.
My body wanted to obey faster than my mind could slap its hands away.
Go out there. Tell him to release Kyle. Let him see me.
Let him take me. Let him decide again who lived, who stayed silent, who signed.
Old cages do not disappear just because the door has opened.
They remain inside you, rattling every time their owner calls.
The message glowed in white letters on the screen: "Lana, come out.
Or Kyle won't live to see morning." No threat to the baby, no confession, no plea.
Just a businesslike statement, almost a delivery schedule.
Beneath it was a photograph of Kyle. His face was more battered than it had been on the video call, his lip swollen, one eye narrowed in pain, his hands apparently tied behind his back.
On the table beside him lay a folder labeled HALE ACCIDENT.
CLOSED. My parents lay between us like bait.
Once again, the dead were being put to work for living bastards.
I could not look away. It felt as if the folder would vanish if I did, Kyle would vanish, the truth would disappear into a safe again, and I would be written off as lost to the river, or committed to a psychiatric ward, or reduced to the ungrateful wife the Mercers had spent three years constructing out of me.
"I'll go out," I said.
Graham did not even turn his head.
"No."
"He'll kill Kyle."
"If you go out there, he'll take you, dispose of Kyle anyway, and then claim he found you in a critical condition and saved your life. Are you really that eager to hand him that Hallmark moment?"
"You're talking strategy while there's a human being in there."
"That is exactly why I'm talking strategy instead of letting you run out there in a robe while you're at risk of losing the baby."
I whipped around to face him.
"Don't say it as if I'm some petulant idiot."
Graham sat beside the monitor, the camera light sharpening his face until it looked almost military.
Beyond the walls, on the lower level, the house was stirring with the quiet footsteps of his men, but here in the secure room, the whole world seemed to have contracted to the two of us and the screen.
"I'm saying it as if you're a pregnant woman suffering from hypothermia, trauma, and severe stress who is about to walk out to a man who has already decided once that your life was expendable."
"And you're going to sit here and watch him break Kyle?"
"No."
"Then what?"
At last, he looked at me.
"I'm going to force your husband to remember that not every door opens for the Mercer name."
I wanted to fire back something cutting, something painful, out of habit, but at that moment Vivian Mercer stepped closer to the gates.
She wore a black coat and gloves, her hair arranged in a flawless silver wave, and the mere sight of her made nausea curdle inside me.
She stared at the closed gates of the Lawson estate as if they were poorly trained staff who had failed to spring open the instant she appeared.
Beside her stood a uniformed man, the same police commander, I thought, who had come that morning.
Adrian's security detail waited behind them.
Of course. It was all immaculate. The law, the money, the mother, the son, and several men prepared to pretend they had no idea why they were there.
Graham pressed the intercom button. His voice came through the outdoor speaker calm, almost bored.
"A little late for a condolence call, Mr. Mercer. Or did you come in person to see whether any more inconvenient truths had washed up on my property?"
Adrian raised his eyes to the camera. His smile grew a shade thinner.
"Mr. Lawson, I'm here for my wife."
Something jerked inside me. Wife. How easily he restored my title when he needed it.
On the yacht, I had been a hysterical nuisance.
On the news, the fragile missing woman. In the medical report, an unstable patient.
At the gates, his wife. I was no longer a person, but a card in his deck, and he drew whichever suit the moment required.
"Your wife is officially listed as missing," Graham said. "As I recall, you saw to that yourself."
Vivian lifted her chin sharply.
"Lawson, don't turn our family's tragedy into another one of your conflicts with the law."
"Vivian, I'd be delighted not to, but you brought the law with you like an accessory. It would be rude not to acknowledge your guests."
I could almost feel her face twist. Not much. A woman of her class would never allow herself to lose control completely. But her lips tightened, and the hand resting on her purse clenched.
Adrian answered for her.
"We have reason to believe Lana is on your property. She needs help."
"Help?"
Graham tilted his head slightly.
"Is that what you call taking a woman's life jacket away from her?"
The silence at the gates turned dense. Even through the camera, I saw the uniformed men glance at one another, the guards tense, Vivian flick a quick look toward her son. Adrian did not change. Almost. Only the hand in his coat pocket seemed to close into a fist.
"You've been misinformed."
"I've been informed better than you'd like."
"Then you know Lana is unstable. If she's with you, you are obligated to turn her over to medical professionals."
I nearly laughed. Medical professionals. Their medical professionals. Dr. Gordon. The people who had spent three years turning my body into an empty room under the guise of treatment. Nausea rose in me, and I pressed my palm to my stomach. Irene, standing behind me, immediately leaned closer.
"Breathe," she mouthed silently. I nodded. Breathe. Not even for myself. For that tiny heartbeat that had become the only law I recognized.
Graham replied:
"If I ever need medical advice from a man who arranges diagnoses through the family attorney, I'll be sure to contact your foundation."
The police commander cut in.
"Mr. Lawson, we can enter and inspect the property. That would expedite the process."
"What process?"
"The search."
"For whom?"
"Lana Mercer."
"Missing? Dead? Unstable? Pregnant with the public's love and concern? Pick a description, Commander. Your paperwork isn't even on speaking terms with itself."
Adrian raised one hand, stopping the commander.
"I'll talk to her."
He did not say those words to the camera. He said them to the house. To me. I felt it at once, the way you sense a storm approaching before the first clap of thunder.
"Lana," he called more loudly. "If you can hear me, come out. Don't let strangers make decisions for us."
I closed my eyes. For us. God, he was good at this.
Even now. Even after everything. He wrapped an order in the fabric of our shared history: for us, between us, our family, my wife.
Trap words. Hook words. For three years, I had followed them with a smile because I thought he was calling me home.
Now he was calling me back into the cage.
The only difference was that this time I could see the bars.
"Don't answer," Graham said without looking at me.
"I wasn't going to."
He turned.
"You were."
I hated that he was right. Hated it almost tenderly, if such a thing was possible.
With Adrian, I had always been predictable, and he used that knowledge to crush me.
With Graham, I was just as easy to read, but he used it to keep me from throwing myself in front of the blow.
Once again, the difference was enormous. And painful.
Adrian continued, his voice lower now, more intimate, the voice he used to use in our bedroom after the lights went out, when I still believed there was a place behind his coldness that belonged only to me.
"I know you're scared. I know you're angry. But you're pregnant. If that's true, you can't stay in another man's house, surrounded by people you don't know. Think about the baby."
There it was.
He said baby, and my whole body contracted as if he had struck me.
Not because the word belonged to him. Because this was the first time he had said it aloud.
Not "This isn't my baby until I know for sure.
" Not "Prove it." A baby. My baby. Ours?
No. I cut the thought off at once. Not ours.
Mine. Because a father is not a man who contributes blood and a last name, then demands proof before granting a child the right to be saved.
A father is the man who chooses the child's life before the paternity test.
"He's learning," I whispered. "Fast."
Graham heard me.
"He's adapting. That's not the same thing."
Outside the gates, Adrian stepped closer to the camera.
"Lana, if Lawson is holding you against your will, give me a sign. Just come to a window. I'll take you home. I'll fix everything."