Chapter 40 Genevieve #2
“Not privilege. Never privilege. What I gave them was my own testimony. What I’d seen.
What I’d been asked to do. The patterns, the names that weren’t my clients, the connections between organizations I’d observed as an attorney moving through their world.
There’s a distinction, legally, between betraying client confidence and reporting criminal activity you’ve personally witnessed.
My lawyers and I have walked that line very carefully. ”
“Your lawyers,” I repeat. “You have lawyers.”
“Genevieve, I’m a defense attorney cooperating with a federal RICO investigation against the most dangerous people I’ve ever known, while my daughter is being used as collateral. Yes. I have lawyers.”
The sharpness in his tone doesn’t sting. It sounds like relief. Like he’s been holding this in for months and the words are finally finding air.
“The phones,” I say. “Why didn’t you answer?”
“Because they’re listening.” He gestures to the burner phone.
“I have reason to believe my primary phone is compromised. Every call you made, every voicemail you left, there’s a possibility it was monitored.
The FBI cleaned the house, but advised me to limit contact.
To go dark. To let you believe I was simply busy or distracted.
If you acted normal, they wouldn’t have reason to believe anything was amiss. ”
“You let me think you were hurt, Papa.”
“I let you think I was negligent. There’s a difference.”
“Not from where I was standing.”
He closes his eyes. When he opens them, they’re glassy.
“Every night,” he says. “Every single night, I sat at this table and stared at your name on that phone and it took every ounce of discipline I have not to call you. Not to get in my car and drive to Connecticut and bring you home. But if I did that, if I broke protocol, if they saw me coming for you, the case falls apart and we both end up in a situation I can’t lawyer our way out of. ”
My vision blurs. I blink and tears slide down my face.
“The code word,” I whisper. “When I called you about the email. You said to the moon.”
“I had to warn you. It was a risk. The phone was likely tapped, but you needed to know. And I needed you to do what we agreed: Stay calm, stay put, and trust that I was working.”
“I did trust you. I just didn’t know what I was trusting you with.”
He reaches across the table and takes my hands. His fingers are cold and thinner than I remember, and I grip them hard.
“You’re here now,” he says. “And you’re alive.
And the case is almost ready. The FBI has enough to move, but they’ve been waiting for one more piece.
Physical evidence of the underground operations.
The fights, the coercion, the trafficking.
They have my testimony. They have financial records. But they need something concrete.”
“The footage,” Lance says.
It’s the first time he’s spoken since we sat down, and my father’s attention shifts to him.
“What footage?”
“Every fight I’ve been forced into for six years is on a hard drive somewhere. They record everything and hold it over my head to keep me in line. I’m sure I’m not the only one. If any of us ever tried to talk, they’d leak it and we’d go down as willing participants.”
My father leans back in his chair, his lawyer’s mind working behind his eyes.
“And you’re telling me this footage exists and is accessible?”
“It exists. At least, they tell me it does. But I have no idea where it could be. In the Lye, maybe? But I doubt Freddy was stupid enough to leave it lying around.”
My heart skips, and a memory floats through, of me in Art’s office, searching for answers, and holding a black hard drive in my hands with Backup on a sticky note.
Art who could never remember passwords. Art who kept keys hidden in obvious places. Who had a box of blueprints of a secret criminal underground lying available in his bedroom closet.
Adrenaline floods through me so fast my stomach cramps. “I think I know where it is.”
Lance swings his head to me, his eyes wide. “What?”
“You’ve been inside this place?” my father asks.
“More than once.”
Something passes across his face that I can’t fully read. Fear. Pride. Horror that his daughter has been that close to the machine that’s been grinding her life to pieces.
“If the FBI had that footage,” my father says, “combined with my testimony and the financial evidence they’ve already compiled, it would be enough. More than enough. It would be the kill shot.”
“Then we get it,” I say.
“It’s not that simple, mon chou.”
“It’s exactly that simple. I know where it is. I know the layout. I’ve been down there.”
“Genevieve.”
“Don’t Genevieve me.” I pull my hands from his. “You went dark for months to protect me. Lance has been in a cage for six years to protect everyone around him. I’m done being the person everyone protects. I’m getting that footage. I’m saving us all, and none of you will stop me.”
My father looks at Lance. Some unspoken thing passes between them, and I don’t know if it’s respect or resignation or the shared understanding of two men who love the same woman and know I will out stubborn them to death.
“Not tonight,” my father says. “Tonight, you eat. You sleep in a real bed. And tomorrow, we plan.”
Every nerve in my body is screaming to move, to act, to stop sitting still while the clock ticks and the people who did this to us keep breathing.
But my father is standing, and he’s moving to the kitchen, and he’s pulling a copper pot from the cabinet.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like?” He rolls up his sleeves, and for the first time since I walked through the door, he looks like himself. “My daughter just drove hours to find me. The least I can do is feed her.”
“Papa.”
“Sit down, Genevieve.”
I sit, the same way I always do when he tells me.
He opens the fridge and starts pulling things out. Chicken, shallots, thyme. A bottle of wine that’s too good for cooking but he’s never cared about that.
Coq au vin.
Of course it is.
My eyes burn again, and I press my fingers against them because I can’t keep crying in front of Lance, except when I look over, he’s watching my father move around the kitchen with an expression I’ve never seen on him before. Soft. Almost reverent. Like he’s watching something holy.
And I realize it’s because he doesn’t have this. He’s never had this. A parent who cooks for you when the world falls apart. A kitchen that smells like home. Seven seconds of being held like you matter.
I reach under the table and find his hand. He flinches, then holds on.
“You eat chicken?” my father calls over his shoulder.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Set the table. Plates are in the cabinet by the window. And Genevieve?”
“Yeah, Papa?”
He turns, wooden spoon in hand, and his eyes are red, but his voice is steady.
“Always and in all ways.”
My throat burns. “Always and in all ways.”
I squeeze Lance’s hand beneath the table, and he squeezes back, and the three of us sit in my father’s kitchen while the coq au vin simmers, and for one night, just one, we pretend the world outside can’t touch us.
Where Is Everybody? Rosebrook’s Golden Couples Go Dark
Let’s start with the obvious: Arthur Penngrove and his newly minted fiancée Genevieve DeGrance have not been seen together in public since the proposal. Not at Dante’s. Not at the tavern. Nowhere.
Art, meanwhile, was spotted leaving a meeting at the mayor’s office looking, and we quote our source here, “like someone walked over his grave.”
The Penngrove campaign has gone radio silent. The Calloway PR team hasn’t returned our calls. WayMont’s public calendar shows nothing for the week.
And here’s the thing really eating at us: Paxton Calloway was seen at the county courthouse yesterday. Not the new WayMont corporate offices. The courthouse. If that doesn’t set off alarm bells, you haven’t been paying attention.
We don’t know what’s happening behind the iron gates and old-money doors of this town. But something is. And it’s big enough that nobody’s talking.
The Rag doesn’t scare easy. We’ll be here when the silence breaks.
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