Chapter 26 Norah #2
“You’re brilliant. Loyal. Exceptionally useful,” he continued. “I have invested a great deal in your career. And I had every intention of bringing you into a position of significant influence as we move forward with Senator Morris’s plans.”
Had.
“But if you insist on framing things in such . . . moral absolutes,” he went on, “you put me in an impossible position.”
Her hands went cold. “What position is that?”
“Wondering,” he said softly, “if I can trust you not to become a liability.”
There it was. No metaphor. No slogan.
“I told you,” she said. “I won’t talk. I’ll walk away. I won’t—”
“It’s not about what you intend,” he said.
“It’s about what pressure does to people.
You’re rattled now. Understandably. You’ve just had your first close encounter with how this world actually operates.
But what about when the guilt grows? When fear keeps you up at night?
When some investigator with a badge and a righteous cause starts asking questions and offers you immunity in exchange for a confession? ”
He shook his head once. “You think you know what you’d do. You don’t.”
“I know myself better than you do,” she said, though the words landed weaker than she wanted.
He tilted his head, considering her, and in that moment she saw the line being drawn. Asset on one side. Risk on the other.
“You should’ve gone home when I told you to let NorthBridge go,” he said quietly. “You should’ve trusted me.”
“I did,” she whispered. “That’s the problem.”
Before he could respond, a new voice cut in, smooth as silk and cool as winter.
“Richard.”
Sidarov.
Norah hadn’t seen her approach. One second they were alone on the edge of the crowd.
The next, the woman was simply there, presence filling the alcove with unnerving ease.
Senator Morris stood half a step behind her, smile still pasted on for the benefit of anyone watching, but her eyes were sharp, curious.
“Am I interrupting?” Sidarov asked.
Hale straightened instinctively. “Of course not.”
Her gaze slid to Norah, taking in her tight shoulders, the tension in her jaw, the way her fingers strangled the clutch.
“She’s shaken,” Sidarov interrupted, not unkindly. “Of course she is. It was a . . . decisive moment.”
Norah’s stomach lurched.
Sidarov turned her attention fully on Hale. When she spoke, it was in the tone of someone confirming a schedule, not discussing human beings.
“Is she still useful?” she asked.
The question sliced the air clean in two. Norah’s breath stalled.
Hale hesitated.
It couldn’t have been more than a fraction of a second. A blinking pause. But in that heartbeat, Norah watched a decade of mentorship go on the scales. Weighed and measured.
“Yes,” Hale said at last. “She can still be valuable. She simply needs time to adjust.”
Sidarov’s eyes never left his face. “You’re certain?”
“She’s loyal,” he said. “And she understands the stakes.”
He didn’t look at Norah when he said it. That hurt more than if he’d denied her outright.
Sidarov considered this, then turned her gaze back to Norah. Whatever warmth had been in her smile earlier cooled to something appraising, almost bored.
“Loyalty is a fragile thing,” she said softly. “Especially in people who think they are . . . ethical.”
Norah swallowed. “I won’t be a problem.”
“Everyone is a problem eventually,” Sidarov replied. “The question is whether they are useful before or after they become one.”
Morris shifted, just enough to signal impatience. “We should get back,” she said. “They’re expecting me for the press photo.”
“In a moment.” Sidarov’s attention sharpened. “For tonight, Richard, I will take your word. But if Ms. Winslow decides she does not wish to be part of this”—her gaze flicked down and back up, seeing far too much—“then she is already halfway to becoming a liability.”
Norah’s fingers trembled around her clutch. “I told Mr. Hale I want no part in anything . . . like what happened with Harrington. I don’t want to be in those rooms.”
Sidarov’s smile returned, slow and amused. “Oh, my dear. That is not how this works. You are either in the house or you are under it.”
Hale inclined his head. “I understand.”
He didn’t argue. He didn’t hedge. He didn’t say her name.
Cold seeped into Norah’s bones.
Morris’s smile never faltered. “Have a lovely rest of the evening,” she said lightly.
The two women moved away, absorbed once more into the swirl of power and money. For a moment, Hale and Norah were left in the echo of their wake.
Norah forced herself to breathe.
“So that’s it?” she asked quietly. “I’m loyal if I help. Disposable if I don’t.”
Hale’s expression was unreadable. “You always had a talent for cutting to the heart of things.”
Two men appeared at the edge of her vision, as if summoned by the words. Security, in tuxedos, faces blandly pleasant.
“Ms. Winslow?” one said, smiling. “Ms. Sidarov asked us to make sure you get some air. Big nights can be overwhelming.”
Her heart slammed against her ribs.
“I’d like to stay,” she said, voice tight. “I’m fine.”
“Just a quick step outside,” the other man said pleasantly, hand light at her elbow. “We’ll bring you right back.”
Liar.
Her gaze snapped to Hale. “Tell them to stop.”
He held her eyes for one long, devastating second. Something like regret flickered.
“Go with them, Norah,” he said softly. “We can talk later.”
Another lie.
Hands closed around her arms, still gentle, still smiling for any donors who might glance their way. One of the guards shifted subtly, blocking her from the room’s view as they guided her toward a side corridor.
Panic surged, hot and dizzying. She opened her mouth.
“Don’t,” the man on her right murmured, the word shaped around a polite smile that could have passed for friendly from a distance. “You make a scene, and it gets messy. Nobody wants that.”
She did.
Oh, she definitely did.
Norah jerked her arm hard, testing angles and strength. She’d never been a fighter. Debate team, yes. Corporate strategy, yes. But adrenaline spiked through her so fast her muscles trembled with the need to move. To run. To live.
The guard on her left anticipated it, stepping in close, too close, his shoulder slotting in front of her chest as though shielding her from a camera flash. His palm clamped over her mouth, not roughly—professionally—and he bent his head as if whispering something tender to a date.
It probably looked like an embrace. Norah’s scream strangled uselessly against his hand.
“Easy,” he breathed, voice warm and utterly false. “We don’t want to scare anyone.”
She thrashed, nails catching his wrist, her heel slamming down toward his shoe.
He absorbed the hit, grunting but not loosening.
The other guard moved behind her, boxing her in, guiding her backward step by step.
Every motion was practiced, a maneuver designed to look like assistance rather than abduction.
The gala carried on around them. Laughter rising, music swelling, Morris’s cadence rolling through the room. No one noticed the woman in an elegant black dress locked between two men, her eyes wide and wild above a hand pressed too tightly over her mouth.
Norah’s pulse roared. Her vision sparkled at the edges.
Think.
Think.
You can think your way out—
She drove her elbow back, catching the rear guard in the ribs hard enough that he sucked in a sharp breath.
“Careful,” he muttered against her hair. “We’ll have to get rough if you keep that up.”
She shook her head violently, trying to free her mouth, but the one in front simply shifted, tucking her deeper into the angle of his shoulder, his hand sliding slightly to disguise the pressure. From across the room, it must have looked like a couple shielding an emotional moment.
And she realized—horrifyingly—that this was routine for them.
She tried to drag her heels. Tried to wedge her foot under a chair. Tried to catch the eye of a passing aide. Someone. Anyone.
But the music swelled, laughter rose, and people carried on behind them. The guards masked every jerk of her body, every attempt to twist free, with polite motions of helping her steady herself.
She wasn’t being escorted. She was being abducted in plain sight. Her pulse roared so loudly she could barely hear her own breath.
Her breath hitched. Tears stung. Not from fear exactly, but from fury. Helplessness. The shattering knowledge that she had sent away the one person who would have torn through this room to reach her.
She should have trusted him. She did trust him—she was just too hurt to admit it.
The guards backed her toward a service door she’d barely noticed earlier. The carpeting muffled her stumbling steps. The corridor beyond yawned dark and narrow, the kind of place where screams went nowhere.
“No,” she tried to say, the sound crushed under the guard’s palm.
She bit him—hard.
He swore, low and vicious, and tightened his grip.
Her lungs burned. Her body strained. Her mind spun through every strategy she’d ever studied, searching desperately for something that could apply to this.
To being dragged forward by men twice her size, toward an exit that meant death, with no Marshall barreling in to catch her hand and pull her out.
Her heel slid on the carpet as the door loomed closer, its emergency light washing the hallway in a faint, red glow, like the whole world had tilted toward warning.
Her chin lifted. Her eyes burned with refusal.
If they were going to drag her into the dark, she would go down fighting—mind sharp, body resisting, and silently screaming for help through the wild, unbroken terror in her eyes.
And then the door was beside her, and they pulled her through.