Chapter 39
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The drive takes forever. Or maybe it takes no time at all. It’s hard to tell when you’re zip-tied in the back of an SUV with a hood over your head, your mouth taped shut, and terror clawing at your throat.
My heart won’t stop racing. Every beat feels too fast, too hard, like my body knows something terrible is coming and is trying to outrun it. My wrists hurt where the ties dig into my skin, and my mouth is dry.
The air is stale under this hood, and I can barely breathe—each inhale pulls in the smell of my own sweat and the filthy scent of the material, like decay. Like someone died wearing this hood.
Like I might.
Please, no. Please, God, no.
I try to track our movements—left turn, right turn, the bump of a pothole, the hiss of tires on wet pavement. But I lose the thread. Atlantic City’s streets blur together even when you can see them. Blind and bound, I have no chance. And how would I get a message out, anyway?
The men in the SUV don’t speak. Not to me, not to each other. They’re professionals.
Not surprising. My father always did hire the best.
When the SUV finally stops, hands grab me roughly and haul me out. I stumble on uneven ground—gravel, maybe, or broken asphalt—and nearly fall. Someone yanks me upright by the arm hard enough to wrench my shoulder. I bite back a cry. I won’t give them the satisfaction.
There’s a new smell now. Something chemical I can’t identify. An industrial plant? I know there are a lot on the outskirts of the city. Some busy. Some abandoned.
The kind of places where people disappear, and no one ever finds them.
Gabe. Please, Gabe. Please find me.
They march me forward. A door creaks open, the hinges screaming with rust.
The acoustics change—we’re inside now, our footsteps echoing off hard floors and high ceilings.
The hood’s ripped off.
I blink in the sudden light. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust, and when they do, I almost wish for the darkness back.
We’re in an industrial warehouse. Old and abandoned. Water stains streak the concrete walls. Pigeons nest in the exposed rafters, their cooing eerily soft against the cavernous silence. The windows are so grimy they barely let in the gray morning light.
And there, standing in the center of the space like he owns it—which he probably does—is my father.
But not the Sterling Hart I know. Not the master of the universe. This man looks fragile. Like one strong kick would break him.
He’s aged ten years in the few days since I’ve seen him. The silver hair that always seemed distinguished now just looks gray. The tailored suit hangs wrong on his frame. And his eyes—those cold, calculating eyes—are rimmed with red, like he hasn’t slept in days.
“I wish it hadn’t come to this,” he says. Almost casual. As if I’m still sixteen and he’s imposing a curfew.
“Then let me go.”
He sighs. Actually sighs, like I’m being unreasonable. Like I’m the one who had him kidnapped at gunpoint.
“I can’t do that.”
“You can. You just won’t.” I yank against the zip-ties behind my back, even though I know it’s useless. The plastic bites deeper into my wrists. “I’m your daughter. Your only child. Whatever you have planned—don’t do this.”
“You need to understand—”
“Understand what?” The words explode out of me. “That you’re a murderer? That you tried to kill the man I love? That you’ve been lying to me my entire life?”
“I’ve been protecting you your entire life.” His voice sharpens, and for a moment I see the father I grew up with—the one who controlled every room, who made grown men cry in boardrooms. “Everything I’ve done has been for you.”
“Bullshit.”
“You don’t understand how the world works, Isabella. You never have.”
“Then explain it to me.” I keep my voice steady, even though my heart is hammering. “Explain how torturing Gabriel was protecting me. Explain how shooting him and leaving him for dead was for my benefit.”
Something flickers across his face. “That was never supposed to happen. I wanted him convinced that staying away from you was in his best interest. The men I hired went too far.”
“And you just let them.”
“By the time I found out, it was too late.”
“You could have stopped it. You could have saved him.” My voice cracks. “You could have done the right thing for once.”
“The right thing.” He laughs—hollow, exhausted. “Gabriel Grimm was going to destroy everything I’d built. And you were going to hand him the keys.”
“I love him.”
“Love is a weakness.” He says it like he’s reciting a fact. Like it’s something he learned long ago and never questioned. “I thought I taught you better.”
I stare at him—and for the first time, I see him with perfect clarity.
“You taught me nothing,” I say quietly. “Nothing except how to pretend everything’s fine when it’s not.”
His jaw tightens. “I didn’t bring you here to argue.”
“Then why did you bring me here?”
Silence. The warehouse creaks around us. Pigeons coo in the rafters.
“The FBI has a warrant,” he finally says. “My accounts are frozen. My allies have abandoned me.” He meets my eyes, and I see something I’ve never seen in him before. Fear. “Forty years, Isabella. Forty years of building an empire. And it’s all crashing down.”
“Good.”
He flinches. Actually flinches, like I’ve slapped him.
“I’m your father.”
“You’re a monster.” But even as I say it, something twists in my chest. Not grief for him, grief for the father he could have been. The one who might have come to my school plays. Taught me to ride a bike. Told me he was proud of me without expecting anything in return.
That father never existed. Maybe he was never even possible.
I let the grief wash through me. Let it hurt.
Then I let it go.
“Gabriel is going to find me,” I say. “And when he does, I hope you’re ready. Because the man I love has spent five years wanting you dead. And I’m not sure I want to stop him anymore.”
Something hardens in his expression. The fear crystallizes into calculation. The look of a cornered animal deciding its next move.
“Then I suppose we’d better make sure he doesn’t find you.”
He nods to the men flanking me. Before I can react, hands grab my arms and drag me toward a door at the back of the warehouse.
“Father—”
But he’s already walking away.
The last thing I see is his back. Straight. Rigid. The back of a man who’s already decided I’m expendable.
Then the hood’s back on, and I close my eyes in the dark and pray for Gabe to find me.
They put me in a room. A cell, really—concrete walls, no windows, a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling that flickers every few seconds like it might die at any moment. There’s a chair bolted to the floor and a bucket in the corner that I refuse to think about.
The men cut my zip-ties, at least. Small mercies. I rub my wrists, wincing at the raw skin, the sticky smear of blood. Then they leave, and the door locks behind them with a heavy metallic clunk that echoes in my chest like a death knell.
I stand in the middle of the room, trying to think. Trying to breathe. Trying not to fall apart.
Gabriel will come. I know he will. Harper will realize I’m gone. She’ll call Gabe. And then nothing on earth will stop him from finding me.
The question is whether I’ll still be alive when he does.
My father’s parting words echo in my mind. I suppose we’d better make sure he doesn’t find you.
Is he planning to kill me? Use me as a bargaining chip? Disappear to some country without an extradition treaty and drag me along as insurance?
I don’t know. And not knowing is almost worse than any of those options.
The silence is oppressive. Thick. The kind of silence that makes you hear your own heartbeat, your own breathing, the blood rushing through your own veins.
I strain to hear something—anything—from beyond the door. Voices. Footsteps. Some sign that the world still exists outside these four concrete walls.
Nothing.
I sink down against the wall and pull my knees to my chest. The concrete is cold through my clothes. The air tastes stale and damp, like something died in here a long time ago and no one ever bothered to remove the corpse.
Maybe that’s what I’ll become. A corpse no one bothers to remove.
Stop it.
I close my eyes and think about Gabriel.
He’ll come. I know he will.
I think about our first date, back when we were young and stupid and didn’t know how dark the world could get.
He took me to a little Italian place in SoHo, and we talked for hours about art and family and dreams. He drove me home afterward, and when he kissed me goodnight, I felt like I was standing on the edge of something enormous. Something life-changing.
I was right. And even after everything, I still love him, and he still loves me.
Even after five years of believing I’d betrayed him. Even after the rage and the hatred and the beast that tried to consume him from the inside out.
He loves me.
And he’s coming for me.
I’m certain of it.
I just have to survive long enough to see it.
I wrap my arms around my knees, put my head down, and let myself cry. “Please,” I whisper into the darkness. “Please find me. Please.”
The flickering light doesn’t answer. The silence doesn’t break. But somewhere in my chest, in the place where fear and faith live side by side, I feel something warm. Something steady.
Gabriel is coming.
I just have to hold on.