LOGINADRIAN.The warehouse looked exactly like every abandoned building in every movie I'd ever seen, which somehow made it worse instead of better.Rust bleeding down corrugated metal siding. Windows either boarded or broken, no in-between. A chain-link fence with a gap someone had cut through years ago and never bothered fixing.Marcus stopped the car two blocks out like Richard had instructed. I sat there for a second with my hand on the door handle, feeling the wire taped against my ribs under my shirt, and tried to remember how to breathe normally."Sir." Marcus's voice was tight. "You don't have to do this.""Yes I do."I got out before he could say anything else.The walk took four minutes. I counted them, because counting gave my brain something to do besides imagining every possible way this could go wrong.The warehouse door was already open when I reached it, hanging on one hinge like it had been that way for years. I stepped inside and let my eyes adjust to the dim light filter
ADRIAN.The email arrived at 1:47pm. Fifty-three minutes into the hour Damien had given us.I'd been staring at my phone so hard my eyes had started to ache, sitting in the back of the car while Marcus idled somewhere on the FDR because I couldn't stand the thought of sitting still in an office building while my sons were still God knows where.The notification came through with no warning. No sender name. Just a subject line that read: Instructions."It's here," I said.Lolette's head snapped up from where she'd been staring at her hands in her lap. "What does it say?"I opened it with a hand that wasn't quite steady.No greeting. No explanation. Just an address in Red Hook, a warehouse district that hadn't seen legitimate use in a decade, and a time.3:00pm. Come alone. No police. No FBI. If either follows, this ends the way you don't want it to end.I read it twice to make sure I hadn't misunderstood something."Alone," I said out loud.Lolette grabbed the phone out of my hand and
LOLETTE.FIVE YEARS AGO.I finished the assignment somewhere around midnight, mostly out of spite.Theodore's voice was still looping in my head. I didn't take you in to raise a whore. I'd typed half my essay with my jaw clenched so tight it ached, like getting an A on some meaningless English paper could somehow prove him wrong about anything at all.It couldn't. It never did. But I finished it anyway.I'd just closed my laptop when something tapped against my window.I froze, one hand still on the lid, listening. Another tap. Then another, quick and deliberate, definitely not a branch or a bird or anything my brain wanted to blame it on first.I crossed the room and pulled the curtain back.Adrian stood on the roof of the garage below my window, one hand braced against the siding, grinning up at me like this was a completely normal Tuesday activity.I shoved the window open. "What are you doing?""Visiting my favorite person." He glanced down at the eight-foot drop beneath him like
LOLETTE.FIVE YEARS AGO.The movie had been running for almost an hour and I couldn't have told you a single plot point if my life depended on it.Not because it was boring. Because Adrian's knee was pressed against mine under a blanket neither of us had bothered to ask permission to share, and my entire nervous system had apparently decided that was the only information worth processing tonight.The den was dark except for the television throwing blue light across everyone's faces. Sev had Erin tucked against his side on the other couch, her legs thrown over his lap. Sasha had disappeared somewhere around the forty-minute mark, which nobody had questioned, because questioning Sasha's whereabouts was its own kind of pointless hobby.I shivered. Just a small one, the kind that came from central air set two degrees too aggressive, nothing dramatic.Adrian noticed anyway.He had a handful of popcorn halfway to his mouth when he stopped and turned to look at me instead."You cold?"I open
LOLETTE.The Eastwoods had gone on their business trip and taken Mabel with them.I didn’t care about that part. I cared that they’d bothered lying about it.Two weeks, they’d said. Business. Like they needed an excuse to leave me out of a trip I’d never wanted to be on anyway. Maybe it was their version of sparing my feelings. Maybe they just didn’t want the staff gossiping about the daughter they conveniently forgot to pack.Either way, the house was mine for two weeks.And Adrian had texted the second he found out.ADRIAN: Pool. My place. Now.So now I stood outside the Emporio gates with my bag over my shoulder, sunscreen already sticky on my arms, waiting for security to buzz me through like I hadn’t been coming here for years.I heard the Mercedes before I saw it.The gates swung open and he came through them too fast, tires crunching gravel, and pulled up right beside me.The window rolled down.Dark sunglasses. Shirtless. Board shorts. Every inch of him sprawled into that driv
ADRIAN.I woke up to sunlight streaming through windows I didn't recognize.For half a second I couldn't remember where I was. Then it came back. Montauk. The estate. The press conference in two hours that would destroy everything.Lolette was still asleep beside me.We were both fully clothed on top of the covers. Her hand was still in mine the way it had been when we'd finally stopped talking and let exhaustion pull us under. Her face was pressed into the pillow and her breathing was slow and even.I extracted my hand carefully and sat up.My phone was on the nightstand. I picked it up and checked the time. Ten-oh-seven. The alarm had been going off for seven minutes and neither of us had stirred.Thirty-six new messages waited for me.I scrolled through them. Sasha confirming final logistics. Richard with an update from the FBI that amounted to nothing new. Sev asking if I was awake yet.And one from an unknown number that had come in at six this morning.I opened it.Unknown: Two
LOLETTE."I'll start making calls," Sev said, already pulling out his phone. "We have investigators on retainer. The best in the country."Adrian nodded, moving behind his desk and pulling up something on his computer. "Get them on this immediately. I want a full team assembled within the hour."I
FIVE YEARS AGO ADRIAN I sat sprawled on the couch in the den, phone in hand, staring at the screen like it might magically tell me what to do. I’d typed a message to Lolette, then deleted it. Typed another, then deleted that one too. My thumb hovered over the keyboard, and I pressed a hand to m
ADRIAN.The police station smelled like stale coffee and industrial cleaner.I hated everything about it.The fluorescent lights. The linoleum floors. The way every sound echoed off the walls.But mostly, I hated the waiting.We'd been here for over an hour, shuttled from one desk to another, filli
LOLETTE.I set the phone down.My hands were shaking again.I'd known the statement was coming. Had sat in the room while it was being written. Had heard Adrian and Sasha argue about every word.But seeing it written out like this made it real in a way it hadn't been before.Tomorrow this would be







