Chapter 12 #3
"You had the right to know when I told you on the deck. You were holding my life jacket then, and you chose Nikki instead of the truth."
"I won't let you use the baby against me."
"And I won't let you use the baby as a replacement for me."
Vivian approached her son and placed a hand on his shoulder, but he shook it off sharply.
That small gesture struck more than her.
It struck their entire image. Mother and son, a united clan, cold calculation.
For the first time, Adrian had broken with her in public, even without words.
That meant the baby truly had changed the balance.
It meant he wanted control for more than the foundation.
There was something else. Perhaps fear that he really did have a son or daughter with the woman he had left to die.
Perhaps the desire to possess what I was now hiding from him.
Perhaps nothing more than an owner's instinct.
To men like him, even blood sounded like property.
"Lana," he said more quietly now. "I can stop all of this. Just come out. We'll talk without them."
I looked at Graham, at Irene, at the screen showing the detained men by the dock, at the open corridor that remained my anchor against panic. Without them. Once again, he wanted to remove the witnesses. To take me back into the room where his voice became the only law.
"No," I said.
One word.
No shouting.
No explanation.
No plea.
Adrian closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them, almost nothing remained of the husband I had once known.
"Then you made your choice."
"At last, we agree on something."
Graham shut off the intercom before Adrian could answer. It was the right thing to do. I felt as if one more sentence would make my body give out. Irene immediately lowered me onto my back, cursing under her breath.
"You are impossible. Stubborn. Intolerable."
I smiled weakly.
"Put that in my chart instead of Gordon's diagnosis."
She almost laughed, but turned away at once.
Ten minutes later, the first good news came.
Not from the gates. From Andrew.
The radio crackled, then his voice came through, ragged and breathless. "Mr. Lawson. We have Kyle. Alive. Banged up, but talking. We got the folder too. Not all of it, but the important part."
I closed my eyes.
The air left me in a long, painful breath, almost a moan.
Kyle was alive. They had the folder. The file on my parents.
The truth that had brought Adrian to the gates was no longer confined to his house.
I wanted to cry, but the tears still would not come.
Instead, something inside me slowly, painfully, creaking at the joints, began to stand.
On the monitor, Adrian received a call.
His face changed before he could turn away.
He knew.
He knew that while he had stood at the gates trying to lure out his pregnant wife, someone had removed a witness and part of the past he believed he had sealed away from his house or his security compound.
Vivian grabbed his arm. This time he did not shake her off. He listened to the phone, his face draining of color. Then he lifted his head toward the camera.
And this time, his smile was not for me.
It was for Graham.
"What is he doing?" I whispered.
Graham narrowed his eyes.
Adrian tapped something on his phone.
A second later, the news screen on the side monitor switched itself to a breaking report. Lawson's people must have been monitoring the broadcasts constantly. The female anchor's voice sounded far too loud in the small room.
"New details have emerged regarding the tragedy aboard the Mercer Foundation yacht.
Sources report that shortly before the disaster, missing woman Lana Mercer may have stolen family documents and suffered an acute emotional breakdown.
Authorities are also investigating reports of her connection to retired general Graham Lawson, with whom she may have been hiding since the incident, according to unconfirmed information... "
I went still.
Graham did not move.
Irene swore softly.
Andrew said something brief and vicious over the radio.
The anchor continued, each word delivered in a precise television voice: "Representatives of the family fear that Lana Mercer may pose a danger to herself and her unborn child."
Her unborn child.
They had put my baby on the air.
My baby.
The tiny heart that had beaten in the silence that morning was now a line in a breaking news report.
Before my child had even been born, they had dragged that life into their war, their press release, their filth.
My body arched around a soundless scream, but Irene held me down, Graham seized the remote and muted the television, Andrew shouted something into the radio, and I stared at the silent image of Adrian standing outside the gates and understood: he had lost one move and immediately set fire to the board.
Graham's phone vibrated again.
A message from an unknown number.
"You wanted a war, Lana. Now the whole country will know what kind of mother you are."
I stared at the words, and there was no water left inside me.
Only fire.