Chapter Thirty-Two
Ava and Clara walked up a long, curving flight of stairs together. Clara had tried, twice, to talk to Ava, but Ava was past all that. She’d needed at least one Jacobson—she had one. She could use Clara to bring Cale to her, she could kill him, and all this would be done.
Any moment her luck would run out. And when it did, when Clara decided to raise the alarm, Ava could at least kill her before she died.
When they reached a quiet hallway on the third floor, Clara slowed her pace. “Ava,” she said. “It is Ava, right? We can talk.”
Ava drew her gun, leveled it at Clara. “Let’s do that,” she said. “On the roof.”
This was Jack’s gun, the one he’d made for this hit.
He had emptied this magazine into another man just for touching Ava.
That thought froze her in place, if only briefly.
Clara made a small, scared squeak, but to her credit, despite her wide eyes, just raised her hands slowly.
“Text Cale,” Ava said as she spun Clara around, pressed the gun into her back, and prodded her to start walking. “Tell him he needs to meet you on the rooftop ASAP.”
“We can talk about this,” Clara repeated breathlessly. “Whatever you want, we can get it for you. There must be something you want.”
Clara was good. A skilled negotiator, good at people, able to handle any conflict. When she and her siblings had inherited their father’s empire, she had been the one to keep it all afloat during the transition.
Ava knew this, and she wouldn’t be tricked by whatever deal Clara might try to offer.
“You don’t have anything I want, Clara,” Ava told her, jabbing the gun hard into the other woman’s back. “Now walk, and don’t make any trouble, unless you want me to use some of the bullets I’m saving for your brother on you.”
Clara walked, her heels still tapping a pattern on the floor. They turned left past another elevator.
“Swipe your badge,” Ava told her as they reached the door leading up to the rooftop. “Slowly.”
“I’m sure we can resolve this,” Clara said, though she sounded more breathless than she had a moment ago. Shakier, too. “Ava, let’s just take a minute and—”
Ava slid her finger over the trigger. “I have a rule,” she said. “To keep my finger off the trigger until I intend to fire. Do you know what I am doing right now, Clara?”
Clara sucked in a sharp breath, peeking over her shoulder at the weapon in Ava’s unshaking hand. Then she swiped her badge before handing it slowly back to Ava.
“Good,” Ava said. “When we get to the roof, you’ll send your brother a text. Maybe both of your brothers. We’ll have a whole family reunion.”
“None of this is necessary,” Clara persisted as they climbed the stairs. “Ava, I don’t know what it is you need, or what it is you blame us for, but I promise. We can resolve this together without any further violence.”
“Was it not clear to you?” Ava asked. Her own voice was thick with tears. “When you denied treatment my wife needed to live? When you delayed the appeal until it was too late for her?”
Of course this family had assumed her gripe was about something like insider trading. Of course they had no idea about the lives they’d ruined, of what their policies and pursuit of profit had meant.
Clara pushed open the door to the rooftop, the wind greeting them with a roar.
There were two helicopters on the landing pads, neither running. Between the landing pads, there was a stretch of rooftop garden that included a few trees and well-maintained flowers, nodding in the wind.
Ava shoved the wig off with one hand. Her natural hair sprang free, cascading over her shoulders. “Hand me your phone, Clara.”
“What do you want, Ava?” Clara asked. She held her phone out to Ava, slowly. “We’ll give it to you, whatever it is.”
Ava wanted so much.
Ari, next to her on the love seat.
Her old life, gardens and softball and evenings working library book clubs.
Jack, too. His broad hand at the small of her back, a promise he was there, that he would keep her safe. That he cared.
“I want you to pay for what you did to my family,” Ava told her. The gun in her hand was shaking now. She had rehearsed this in her mind so many times—the look on Cale’s face, the gun in her steady hand, the moment sating her rage, if only for now.
Ava took the phone in her other hand. “Get on your knees,” Ava told her. “Lace your fingers together on your head. And stay still.”
Clara did as she was told, her eyes darting back and forth between the helicopters and Ava’s gun.
Ava scrolled through Clara’s contacts until she found Cale, who she texted—
Meet on roof ASAP.
His response was quick—
Why? Some guests landed early, and you know how they get. There’s also been a security issue, so where the fuck are you? I thought you were handling all that.
Get here anyway, Ava texted back. This is more urgent.
She hesitated, almost telling him to bring his brother, to take all members of this cursed fucking family out in one go, but—but it was going to be hard enough to pull this trigger once, no matter what she had been telling herself.
“Are you going to kill us?” Clara was kneeling on the concrete beside the rooftop garden, her tight skirt straining, the position looking increasingly painful. “All of us?”
“That’s not your business,” Ava said. “Sit there.” She gestured toward the rock wall.
“Are you worried about my comfort?” Clara scoffed as she pushed herself to her feet. “Minutes before you’re going to kill me?”
Before Ava could answer, the door swung open, and Cale stepped onto the roof.
“You better make this quick,” he was saying as he stepped through, his voice hard as the concrete beneath Ava’s feet. “Because I swear to god, if I have to apologize to Gary or Gilbert or whoever the fuck downstairs—oh, shit.”
His tirade cut off when he took in Ava in her little red dress, come back to haunt him.
As if out of instinct, his hand went to his jaw.
He had probably had the best doctors on the planet available to him, but there was still the smallest red mark on his face, and that gave Ava a little jolt of satisfaction.
“Join your sister,” Ava told him coldly. “And toss your phone here first. No fucking funny business, Cale, because last time I only had my fists. This time I have a gun.”
“I—I can see that.” Cale’s eyes flicked between Ava and Clara, who nodded at him slowly.
“Do what she says,” Clara said. “Cale, do it now. She’s not playing.”
“No,” Ava said. “I’m not.”
Cale crossed the space slowly, tossing his phone down on the ground with a clatter, and skirting around Ava by a wide berth.
“Why are you here?” he asked. “Why are you coming after me? I don’t even know you. I don’t know why you hate me so much.”
“Because you deserve it,” Ava said. “And you shouldn’t be asking me why I’m here. You should be asking why you’re here.”
Her heart was thundering in her chest, louder than the roar of the wind.
Despite herself, despite everything, she wished Jack was beside her—well, the version of Jack she had thought existed.
The one who held doors and brought cinnamon buns and kept his hand at the small of her back and did unthinkable things to her in dressing rooms and on gun ranges and in motel showers.
She didn’t want to do this alone—but maybe she had always been destined to be alone, even before Ari. She had been alone before Ari, and Ari had changed everything. Twice. Once when she came into Ava’s life and once when she left it.
“Why—why are we here?” Cale asked, his eyes darting to his sister again. “Are you going to hurt us? Do you have a grudge against all of us? Do I need to get Carson up here, too?”
He looked almost hopeful as he glanced at his sister again.
Ava’s stomach twisted. By the look on Clara’s face, she felt the same.
“Your sister had to be threatened with a gun a few times to get you to come up here,” Ava said sharply. “And you’re just volunteering your brother?”
One thing was certain: She’d picked the right Jacobson sibling.
Cale’s face paled dramatically. “I—that’s not—”
“Shut up,” Clara told him.
“So no, it’s not about all of you. It’s about you, Cale,” Ava said. “About the policies you introduced. About the coverage you denied.”
Of course, in so many, many ways it was about this entire family, this entire company, this entire industry. And in another way, it was only about Ava and Ari and Cale.
But Ava only had so much time before Jack found his own way up here. No matter what she did, no matter how she slowed him down, he always seemed to fucking find a way.
“Oh,” Cale said. “Ah, fuck. Why am I here?”
“You,” Ava told him, “are here to confess.”