Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
JASON
Just as I stepped off the treadmill, Thomas entered the small gym that the home offered. That was one of the reasons I’d chosen it, and it was the first time I’d taken advantage of it.
The first time I’d been so angry it was either run the frustration off or beat someone. With a court case coming up, the last thing I needed was damaged knuckles.
Part of me, deep down, knew Cora knew Georgiou Construction was just what the public saw. The people who’d moved in and out of my office didn’t exactly hide who they were or what they did, despite my best efforts to keep Cora out of it.
It was stupid and unrealistic to think that I could keep her in the dark. Add my father to the mix, and the secret was out.
The look in her eyes when she’d said that the door was blown wide open… It’d flayed my heart open. She wasn’t dumb, and I wasn’t trying to treat her as if she were.
I just wanted to make sure I had something before I told her anything. A solid case. Plus, knowing about the adoptions, this was about more than just Maya, Elias, and Colter. It was big, and the best thing we could do to honor Maya’s memory was make sure no one got away with selling children.
I grabbed the nearby water bottle and gulped it. “What’s going on?”
“Maya’s phone.”
“You got something?”
Thomas took a seat on one of the weight benches. “I thought you’d want to look at it with me, so I just glanced over it some.”
“What was wrong with it?” I asked as I dried the sweat on my face and sat next to him.
“Well, first the battery was dead, and then once it was charged, we had to get past the face ID. After that, we had to break into her cloud drive. Maya had done what she could to keep whatever she had… safe.”
“How’d you crack the face ID?”
Thomas pulled the phone from his pocket.
“Actually wasn’t that hard. People don’t realize that face ID stores multiple angles of your face.
Since Maya and Cora are sisters, there’s enough facial similarity that we were able to use some photos of Cora from different angles to train the system. Took about six tries, but it worked.”
I raised an eyebrow. “That’s either genius or terrifying.”
“Both.” He unlocked the phone and held it between us. “The cloud storage was trickier. She had two-factor authentication enabled, but the backup codes were hidden in her notes app—encrypted with a simple cipher. Smart girl.”
“What kind of cipher?”
“Nothing fancy. She shifted each letter by the number of letters in Elias’s name. Five positions forward. So ‘A’ became ‘F’, ‘B’ became ‘G’, and so on.”
The screen lit up with Maya’s home screen—a photo of Elias sleeping. My chest tightened. I’d fallen in love with that little boy.
“So what are we looking at?” I asked.
Thomas swiped to the messages app. “Text threads, mostly. But here’s the thing. She was paranoid about digital surveillance. Look at this.” He showed me the settings. “She had her messages set to auto-delete after seven days, and she was using Signal for sensitive conversations.”
“Signal?”
“Encrypted messaging app. Military-grade encryption, disappearing messages. The kind of thing you use when you don’t want anyone reading your conversations.
” He scrolled through the contacts. “She’s got maybe twenty people in here, but most of the conversation history is gone because of the auto-delete. ”
“Except?”
“Except what she screenshotted and saved to her photos.” Thomas opened the photo album. “She was documenting things, Jason. Look at this.”
He showed me a screenshot of a text conversation. The contact was listed as “C” with a skull emoji.
C: You tell anyone about tonight and you know what happens
Maya: I won’t say anything
C: Good. My stepsister will pick up the package tomorrow at 3. Don’t be late
Maya: What package?
C: The one that’s going to make us both rich. Just do what you’re told
The time stamp showed it was from two weeks before Maya died.
“Package,” I muttered. “Stepsister’s involved.”
Thomas swiped to the next screenshot. “Gets worse.”
This one showed a different conversation with someone labeled “Lawyer B”:
Lawyer B: Documents are ready. Just need your signature
Maya: I’m not signing anything until I know Elias is protected
Lawyer B: Your boyfriend isn’t known for patience. Sign the papers
Maya: Those aren’t the papers I agreed to. This gives him full custody
Lawyer B: Things change. Sign them or face the consequences
“Beau Stanton,” I said. “Has to be.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.” Thomas scrolled further. “But here’s the real kicker. She saved voice recordings too.”
He tapped on a voice memo file. Maya’s voice came through the speaker, shaky and scared:
“I need to record this in case something happens to me. Colter’s been talking about selling Elias.
I thought he was joking at first, but tonight I overheard him on the phone.
He told someone that ‘the baby would bring fifty grand, easy.’ He said his stepsister wants to buy him, but if she can’t come up with the money, he knows other buyers.
I can’t let this happen. I’m going to hide this phone where Cora can find it if… if something happens to me.”
The recording stopped. Thomas and I sat in silence.
“She knew,” I said finally. “She knew he was going to kill her.”
“There’s more.” Thomas opened another voice memo, this one dated just three days before Maya’s death:
“I found out what the packages are. It’s not just Elias.
Colter’s running babies through Valle Perdido.
That’s why Beau’s helping him—they’re both getting paid.
I saw the ledger in Colter’s safe. Names, ages, prices.
Some as young as newborns. What have I gotten myself into?
I need to get Elias out of here, but if I run, Colter will find us.
If I go to the police, Beau will make it disappear. I don’t know what to do.”
My hands clenched into fists. “We’re looking at a trafficking ring.”
“It explains how Colter can afford Beau’s fees,” Thomas said. “And why they’re both so desperate to get Elias back.”
“What else is on there?”
Thomas showed me the call log. “Lots of calls to and from Colter, obviously. But look at this—she called the FBI field office in San Antonio four times in her last week. Never got through to anyone, though. Calls lasted less than thirty seconds each.”
“She was trying to report them.”
“And failing.” He scrolled through the browser history. “She’d been researching witness protection programs, how to report human trafficking, legal aid for domestic violence victims. She was planning to run.”
I stared at the phone. “This is all the justification we need.”
Thomas locked the phone. “No one’s going to question what happens to them after seeing this.”
“Exactly.” I stood up, pacing the small space. “First, we make copies of everything. Multiple backups.”
“For insurance?”
“So when Colter and Beau disappear, anyone who asks questions gets to hear Maya’s voice recordings.” I grabbed my towel.
“They’ll understand why it had to happen.”
“Good. But we keep this between us for now. If Cora knew what Maya was going through…”
“She’d blame herself even more than she already does.”
I nodded. “Maya was trying to protect Elias. We’re going to finish what she started.”
Thomas slipped the phone back into his pocket. “So what’s our next move?”
“We get that evidence secure, and then we set a trap.” I grabbed my towel. “Colter wants to play games with trafficking and murder? Let’s show him what happens when he messes with the wrong family.”
My skin crawled.
“I’m torn between killing you slowly now or killing you slowly while she’s being sold to the highest bidder.”
My father’s breath brushed against my ear as he bent down behind me, whispering.
Cora wasn’t moving. Tied up, her skirt was hitched up to the point that I wanted to kill anyone who looked at her.
I could feel my father straighten behind me.
“I’ll give you a point for good taste. She is gorgeous.
Slim body, petite.” He walked to Cora and squatted down, running his fingers through her hair.
“Silky hair…” He took a breath, looked at me, and then back to her.
“Or maybe, I’ll make you watch me take her then sell her. ”
My teeth ground together, and I pulled against the rope tying me to the chair. “As soon as I get the chance…”
I didn’t get the sentence out before Michael’s fist landed on my temple.
Dazed, I watched through blurred vision as he returned to Cora, pulled a knife from his coat pocket, and set the tip against her throat. “Or maybe…”
Again, I fought against the ropes as her strangled scream pierced their air.
“Jason!” Cora. Calling my name, but… different. Urgent, caring.
I felt hands on my shoulders, shaking me. “Jason, wake up!”
With a sharp inhale, I jerked awake and sat up, nearly knocking her over.
She was alive.
I lunged forward, grabbed her by the arms, and pulled her against me. I couldn’t hold her tight enough.
“I’m sorry. He was killing you.” I was breathing so hard I could barely get the sentence out.
“Killing me?”
The nightmares were always bad, but that argument had fueled something more horrific than anything I’d experienced so far. More real. More violent. Visceral.
As much as I hated the fight, I still wasn’t telling her what happened. Was she an adult? Yes. But I’d failed to protect her once, and I wasn’t doing that again. I wasn’t going to make her worry for no reason.
Nothing had changed. Except… that fight. Knowing she knew exactly who I was… that being near me meant she was always going to be in danger.
My heart rate slowly returned to normal, and I released her, raking my hand through my hair. I felt like a rung-out rag as I braced my other hand against the bed.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
She chewed her lip. “You didn’t. I was already up. Actually, I was headed downstairs to fix myself a bowl of cereal.”
Her eyes met mine. “Oh.”
“Jason, you said someone was killing me. What did you mean?”
I don’t even know why I said anything, but my mouth launched with no real guidance from my brain at all. “My father. There’s a slight variation each night, but most of the time, I have to watch him… hurt you.” The words grew softer as I spoke.
Her hands cupped my face, soft and cool against my skin. “Me? He beat you within an inch of your life, and your nightmare is that he hurt me?”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “No, it’s not that…
well…" I sighed. “It is, but the nightmare is that I can’t stop him. I’m tied to that stupid chair, and I can’t break free.
” I grumbled a few curses under my breath.
“I should have put you on leave the moment I realized he was back in Chicago. Had Thomas take you out of the city and get you somewhere safe. I—”
That was the real frustration. I’d been stupid and thoughtless. Careless with her safety.
She dropped her hands to her lap. “And you’d be dead.”
I jerked my gaze to hers. “But you wouldn’t have been hurt.”
“And I wouldn’t have Elias.”
“You don’t know that,” I replied.
Her lips curved into a soft smile as she nodded. “Yes, I do. If not for you, he’d be with Colter right now… I wouldn’t have been able to afford the protection or the lawyer or…” Her voice broke. “I’d be mourning my sister… and you.”
“You’re resourceful. Even without my help you’d… you’d be fine.”
She took my hand in both of hers. “No, I wouldn’t. Maybe I’d have Elias, but… I wouldn’t have you. It would crush me if something happened to you.” Her fingers squeezed around my hand. “You mean the absolute world to me, even if I’m not so great at showing it sometimes.”
I deserved whatever she threw at me. “I don’t know how to let it go,” I said as I rubbed my face and then untangled my legs from the sheets.
“It was traumatic, and no matter how big and bad and tough you are, you’re still human. Eventually, you’ll work through it.”
A chuckled popped out and I looked at her. “Big, bad, and tough?”
She leveled her eyes at me. “Oh please. If your father had faced you head on, he wouldn’t have stood a chance. He was a coward. That’s why he had to have you at a disadvantage. And even at a disadvantage, you still won.”
“Not by my own hand.” Another catch in the whole debacle. If it weren’t for Ari, there’s no telling what would have happened to us.
Her eyes locked with mine. “It doesn’t make you less of a man because you had friends.” She scooted closer. “You keep looking at this whole thing like numbers in a ledger. Stop.”
I wanted her words to sink in and take root, but…
I left out a soft breath. “I need some water.”
“And I still need cereal. If we’re super quiet, we won’t wake Elias up.” She let go of my hand and stood.
I swung my legs over the bed and pushed off.
Her eyes went wide the moment I stood, darting to my bare chest before snapping back to my face. A flush crept up her neck.
It wasn’t until that moment that I realized I was still shirtless. The way she was looking at me—like she was trying not to stare but couldn’t help herself—sent a thrill through me.
The whole house was quiet. The quietest it had been since we’d moved in, and I could hear her shallow breathing in the stillness.
Her gaze drifted down again before she caught herself, her lips parting slightly. I’d seen that look before. Two days ago, right before I’d kissed her.
“Let me grab a shirt.”
“Okay.” It came out like a squeak, and she spun around so fast she nearly tripped over herself to reach the door. “I’ll see you downstairs.”
I chuckled as I strolled to the closet, grabbed a T-shirt, and pulled it on.
Ari was right. I didn’t deserve her, and I never would.
I guess the only question was whether I accepted the gift and cherished it or did the wiser, more valiant thing, and let her go.