Chapter 11 #2
“He’s bluffing, Lucian,” Blaze says quickly, keeping me focused. “Carlos can’t resist theater, even with a rope around his neck.”
Gregory’s voice is low. “You’re close enough for me to look for heat signatures within the building. Rafe?”
“Got it.” Rafe pulls a screen from his pocket and presses buttons.
“That’s strange,” Gregory muses like he’s back in the library.
“Don’t waste words,” I snap.
“Sorry, it’s just that there is only one heat signature. He’s inside.”
“Just him.”
“Only him.”
“That can’t be right.”
Rafe says, “It’s our tech. It’s right.”
I look from him to Blaze. “Then I go alone.” I push the door open without listening to their protests.
And I’m suddenly back in the office of Bachman Jewelers. I’d envisioned myself here a dozen times, paying for the four-carat princess-cut ring that was to be Erin’s.
Carlos stands in the center of the old office. And he is alone. Frighteningly alone. There is no other person in this building. Only the two of us.
Does he have no men? Or does he have a plan so devious he needs no one other than him to destroy us?
Gray coat. Black gloves. Silver at his temples. Elegant as ever in his composure. I can’t help but feel that familiar tug in my chest. He was once my mentor. It’s difficult to shuffle every emotion into a new box.
Carlos smiles. “Lucian. My boy.”
My boy.
What he first called me when he swooped in and took me under his wing.
My mouth is sawdust. “Carlos.”
“You made it.”
“What is this?” My mouth almost gapes as I stare at the wall behind the man.
Screens line the brick wall behind him. Images dance and flicker on the screen.
Erin at the gate. Isobel in white. Marina’s dead body splayed out on a concrete floor, covered in blood. The warehouse in flames.
My father’s car.
He brought every ghost to watch.
I cross the room slowly. I can’t tear my eyes from the center screen. CCTV footage of a street. A car that looks a lot like my father’s. Is that the shape of my mother in the passenger’s seat?
We’d suspected Carlos ordered their murder, but to see a car that may be theirs on that screen…it’s unnerving.
And that’s exactly how he wants me.
I force myself to look away from the screen and at him. “More of your emotional warfare.”
“Is it working?”
“Yes.”
His smile returns.
I stop a few feet away. “You killed my parents.” I stare back at the screen.
“Yes. I did. A payback for a favor for Marina. And you were to be mine.”
I want to look away, but I can’t. I have needed the answer to this question my entire adult life.
I need to know exactly how my parents died.
I know I’m off my game, that I’ve let my guard too far down, but I’m enthralled with the grainy image of the blue sedan turning down Sixth Street. I want to move closer to see my mother’s face up close.
Carlos could end me now if he wanted.
But I have to watch.
Gregory’s voice fills my ear. “Marina’s files are live and… now!”
“Wait!”
But it’s too late. We’ve overridden the feed. All screens go dark. Carlos’s videos disappear.
The screens change. Payment chains. Warehouse rosters. Old authorization records. Caleb and his father shaking hands with men outside of Glasgow. Boats on a river. The Hoax. Glasgow routes. Carlos’s transfers.
Carlos’s edits to the Bachman emergency system.
Every lie stripped of his theatrics. Every one of them bare on the screen.
Marina must be smiling down on us, her microfilm as alive as can be.
Every ghost has been given a name. Every one of his criminal acts has been documented.
Now, it’s my turn to smile.
He takes in my face. Then Carlos turns toward the screens.
His voice, murderous. “What did you do?”
Rafe steps into the room. “Marina died so that Isobel could bring this to us.”
“The two closest women in your lives working together to destroy you,” I say.
“You really are bad at choosing broads, aren’t you?” Blaze enters the room.
Blaze smiles. “Oxford grew claws.”
Carlos looks at me. For the first time ever in my life, I see the panic beneath the polish.
“You think files matter?” he snaps, clearly losing control.
It’s strange for me to see him like this. Others may have seen his weakness, but I couldn’t.
Not until now.
“I think exposure matters to a man who wanted to write the ending.”
His eyes darken. “You were a grieving boy with a famous name you refused to take. I made you.”
“No.” I step closer. “But you should have killed me when you had the chance.”
“I don’t have to. There are mercenaries killing your women right now.”
“Lucian,” Rafe warns.
“Don’t fall for it, big brother. He’s only saying it because he knows his feeds are down.”
Panic palpitates in my chest. Can Gregory still see Erin? I can’t ask because I can’t show my cards.
He looks at me with hatred so pure it almost shines. “The girl you bought. The ghost you mourned. The child you lost—”
“And you, the man who wanted nothing more than to be me.”
He laughs once, ugly and hard. “Love made you stupid. As you are right now. I can hear Erin’s screams.”
“Lucian, do not lose your shit,” my brother hisses in my ear. “Hold tight, everyone.”
And the screens go dark once more.
Only one comes back. The one in the center. But it no longer shows my parents. Gregory brings back the live feed of the girls. Erin and Isobel are safely tucked into armored cars and driving away.
Alive and well and safe.
I shake my head. “You never understood, Carlos.”
He sneers. “What?”
“You can destroy the Village, but it’s only houses. Buildings. The people who lived in them still love one another. You can take their homes, but the Village is the people in it.”
“Touching,” he spits. His weight shifts and so do his eyes. He’s losing whatever ground he thinks he held.
Only then do I realize he’s lost the Morettis’ backing as well. And the Hoax. Marina must have been the last one to betray him.
Everyone has turned their backs to him.
“You came here alone, Carlos,” I say. “And when I kill you, you will die alone.”
He comes at me with a knife hidden in his coat.
No theater now.
Only rage.
I meet him halfway.
His weakness makes him slow. I catch his wrist, twist until bone gives, and drive him into the brick wall hard enough to crack old mortar.
He gasps.
I see the warehouse. The men.
Isobel in white.
Gregory as a boy.
Erin walking into my penthouse with a fob in her hand and fear in her eyes.
Everything Carlos ruined.
Then I see the only thing that matters.
The phoenix that rose from the ashes.
Me.
Me loving Erin, Erin loving every twisted part of me.
Loving me enough to force me to let her stand at my side, a place where no one has stood for a very long time.
I see Erin and our family seated around the table, eating, laughing, and loving one another.
I see Ryan speeding down the hallway, cape billowing behind him, knowing he is loved.
Our forever.
My hand closes around Carlos’s throat.
“This is not for the man I was,” I say. “He would have made this last.”
Carlos claws at my wrist. “No! Stop!”
“This is for the man I am now.”
“Stop!” His breath breaks.
“For the men you burned.”
He gasps, his nails cutting into my skin.
“For Marina, who deserved judgment but not your ending.”
His face purples.
“For Isobel, who chose wrong and still did not belong to you.”
His mouth opens. Nothing comes out. His eyes begin to roll in the back of his head.
“And for Erin.” His eyes widen. “The woman you thought you sent to ruin me.” I tighten my grip. “She saved me instead.”
Carlos tries one last time to speak.
I snap his neck with my bare hands. The sound is small. It’s one of the first things I was trained to do as a Bachman. An ugly click in a room full of the dead past and hope for the future.
Carlos drops to the concrete.
For a moment, the room is silent.