1. Chapter One #2
“Because,” Caroline said, her voice filling with emotion for the first time since Mona bolted the door, “I know what it’s like to have the world decide that you’re in a cult and for nothing to be able to change that.
I have seen, from the inside, what it looks like when men with badges come and drag your family away in handcuffs.
To hear the people who love you more than anything in the world begging for thirty more seconds with you.
” She swallowed hard. “For the life they spent years building to be torn to shreds in a single day by those who pat themselves on the back and tell each other they’re doing you a favor. ”
Her hands balled into fists.
“That happened to me. It does not happen to you. Not to Jackson Avery, not to his wives, and most certainly not to those children.”
The answer hit me like a thunderbolt.
“You grew up in a family like this, didn’t you? Like ours?”
Caroline’s lips compressed to a tiny line.
“Caroline is my middle name,” she said, turning to Mona with a weary smile.
“And, frankly, it’s the one that I prefer.
But the name I was given at birth is Eliza Willoughby.
” She paused. “Google that and ‘Colorado’, and you’ll get all the information about me you need. ”
Mona glanced up from the phone. A list of transactions filled the screen—Caroline’s financial accounts, presumably. “This could all be fake.”
She shrugged. “Everything I have is yours. Have Tasha turn over my apartment. Search my car.”
“You could have taken steps—”
This time it was Caroline who laughed. “You think I knew you were going to catch me today, Mona? After I gave the money back and virtually bankrupted myself?” She shook her head.
“I burnt my boats, Miss Isringhausen. I’m committed, one way or another.
Do whatever you want with me, but I’m telling the truth.
I am not Victoria’s creature, and I am not your enemy.
” She turned to Marcie, then me, tears still brimming in her eyes.
“I swear to God I’m here to help. I still am. ”
I watched the wheels turn behind Mona’s eyes. She weighed Caroline’s heart on her internal scale the way the ancient Egyptians were said to weigh the dead to verify their eventual afterlife destination.
Heaven and hell jockeyed for position in my shark’s eyes.
And then Mona did something I did not expect.
She turned to me.
“Jack,” she said, some of the anger leaching out of her. “Do we call the police?”
I thought about what I’d just heard. About people being dragged away in handcuffs, and women who went by their middle name because they’d buried their old lives the way Mona Isringhausen buried my mentor’s enemies.
Most of all, I was thinking of the way Marcie was holding my phone to her ear and trying her best to calm both Samantha and Kiki down back at the family house.
Jack and Marcie need to get back to the house, Caroline had said. We were needed.
In the middle of this maelstrom, she’d been the one person with the right instincts.
And I didn’t want to end my morning by putting that person in a box with the words MORTAL ENEMY labeled on the side.
I shook my head. “No.”
Mona nodded. Tasha’s brows rose. Caroline closed her eyes and whispered what sounded like a prayer in a language I didn’t recognize.
When her eyes opened, she was looking at Marcie.
“Your babygirl needs you,” she said, her gaze flickering to me, and for an instant I felt like she wasn’t looking at me but at someone else entirely.
Maybe someone who wasn’t actually alive anymore to have things said to. “Go home. Take care of the family.”
I felt my jaw flex. “I have about a million questions—”
“You already understand the important part,” she said, stepping over to the desk and resting her wrists on it. “Obviously I will cooperate. Mona will need hard evidence before she trusts anything I’ve said—and she’s right to distrust me. I wouldn’t trust my story, either.”
“I’m going to run all of this,” Mona threatened, holding up the looted phone. “If there’s one fucking digit of this that comes back wrong, you’re going to wish I let the cops have you—”
“It’s all true,” Caroline said, her confidence so unshakeable I felt I already knew what Mona was going to find.
“And I’ll answer every question you have, I swear.
But Samantha is drowning, and Jack needs to go to her.
” Her voice dropped low, turning gentle in a way that felt almost antithetical to what had happened in this room over the last few minutes.
“The family comes first. Always.” A smile.
“That’s the whole freaking reason I’m here. ”
“You still have that hotel suite we stuck Jessamyn in?” Tasha asked Mona.
Her nod told me my shark had it on stand-by. “It’s handled.”
I went to Marcie and took the phone. “Princess?”
“I’m here.” Yukiko sounded relieved to hear my voice. The sound of crying still echoed from the line, but it was muted, like Kiki had tucked Samantha in beneath some blankets. “Barely.”
“Marcie and I are coming home. Right now.” I turned my back on Caroline a half-second before I realized what a terrible idea that could have been if she’d actually been lying.
“Tell Sam we’re on our way. Tell her… fuck, tell her she’s an Avery no matter what, and that’s the only thing that matters to me and everybody else in this family. Can you do that for me, Kiki?”
There was a beat. “Absolutely. Will you tell me what the hell is going on when you get home?”
“I’ll try,” I said, thinking of how all this was going to sound. “Something tells me it’s going to be a very long story.”
“I could use one,” Yukiko said. “I’ll comfort Sam as best I can. Drive safe. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” I said, then hung up.
Marcie went to tuck the Rolodex into her purse, then did a double-take. “Oh God,” she whispered, her face going pale. “Tallulah. We’re supposed to be on our way to Tallulah’s mansion right now!”
“That’s not happening,” Mona said, waving a hand. “Not this morning, at least.”
Marcie’s expression fell. “But the contract—”
“Is not going anywhere.” Mona had already switched Caroline’s phone to her other hand and was slipping hers out of her jacket.
“I’ll let Miss Harrington’s people know there’s been an emergency situation.
” She paused, the ghost of a smile flickering across her features.
“That there’s a family issue, and that Mr. Avery is nothing if not a man who puts his family first.”
Technically, that was even true.
“You don’t work for a firm as large as Ramsey Engineering for fifteen years without getting good at both apologies and kissing ass,” Mona said.
“I haven’t been forced to do much of either since coming to work for the Avery Company, but I suppose it’s like riding a bike.
” She caught herself, like she’d said too much. “Consider it handled.”
“We might be able to do it later today,” I said, thinking. “Or tomorrow?”
“I’ll see what Miss Harrington’s dinner plans look like,” Mona promised. “Go home, deal with whatever Samantha’s learned, and then you two can go win this contract and give Victoria Ruocchio a black eye.” She glanced at Marcie, her expression filling with pride. “I’ll get you your chance to shine.”
Marcie swallowed, nodded, and tucked the Rolodex away. She treated it like something worth a great deal more than its actual market value.
I looked one more time at Caroline—who still wanted to be called that but had been born with another name entirely and a story I needed to Google—and gazed into her eyes.
She gave the money back, I thought, still processing that. Said she’d protect this family for nothing.
Lakshmi’s words from the other day came floating back to me: whatever’s going on with that woman, Jack, I don’t think she means us any ill. I truly don’t.
I didn’t, either.
I just wasn’t sure if that was enough to save her.
“When I get back,” I told her, “you’re going to tell me everything.”
She nodded. “I will, sir. Thank you for letting me.”
Tasha pulled back the deadbolt.
“Go, Jack,” she said, nodding towards freedom. “Your wives need you. That’s more important than anything this woman might have to say.”
I took Marcie’s hand. The last thing I saw of the office was Tasha turning Caroline around and putting her in handcuffs ‘for protection’ while they moved her wherever they were planning to take her.
As we got back into the McLaren and took off, Samantha’s words from a few nights ago rose to the back of my mind.
The scariest week of my life, she’d called it, back when we were waiting for the results of her blood test. When we thought her life and her child’s were going to be decided by a pair of coin tosses.
Fool that I was, I thought the worst was over.
I didn’t have the faintest idea of how terrifying this week was going to become.