The devil's stir

Chapter 16

The Devil Stirs

Ethan had not moved from his chair in over an hour.

The apartment was dark, and he had not bothered to turn on any lights. He just sat there with his coat still on and a glass of bourbon in front of him that he had poured and never touched. The city outside his window was doing what London always did at night. Moving. Glowing. Carrying on like nothing in the world was broken.

He envied that sometimes.

His father had called him four times since evening, and he had not picked up once. He already knew what the man wanted. He had always known. Richard Blackwood did not call his sons to ask how they were doing. He called to give instructions and to confirm they were being followed. That was the only language the man had ever spoken in that house.

Finish what you started, Ethan.

He leaned back and stared at the ceiling.

The truth that kept bothering him tonight was a simple one. He could not finish what he started because he was no longer the same person who had started it. The man who had drafted that contract and placed it in front of Judith Thompson with cold hands and colder intentions had believed that what he was doing was justified. He had built a wall around that belief and lived inside it for months. Revenge dressed up as justice. Control dressed up as strategy. He had been very good at telling himself clean stories about dirty decisions.

But then Lily had called him Daddy.

Not because anyone told her to. Not because she was trying to get something from him. She had just looked at him one afternoon in that hospital corridor, with her small face still red from crying, and she had reached up and taken his hand and said it like it was simply true. Like she had decided, and that was final.

Something had shifted in him that day, and he had not been able to shift it back.

He picked up his phone and looked through the missed calls again. Elena had tried to reach him three times. The company lawyers twice. His father once, which meant the other three calls had come through different numbers, the way they always did when Richard Blackwood wanted to make a point.

And then, at the very bottom of the list, nothing from Judith.

Not that he expected it. He had no right to expect anything from her after everything she had been through under his roof and because of his silence. But he noticed the absence anyway. He always noticed it.

He opened the tracker on his phone. The small dot showing Judith’s location was still sitting in the same place it had been for hours. The apartment across the city that Dan had arranged for her. Dan’s address. Dan’s protection. Dan making breakfast for Lily and sitting with Judith on the balcony while Ethan sat here in the dark doing absolutely nothing useful.

He had put her there.

Every frightening thing that had found Judith since this marriage began had a road that led back to him in some way. The poisoned drip. Lily being taken. The fear that never fully left Judith’s eyes anymore, even when she was trying to appear calm.

He had not done all of it with his own hands, but his hands were not clean either.

He knew that.

He was still sitting with that thought when his phone rang.

He did not recognise the number. He looked at it for a moment, then answered.

“Ethan Blackwood.”

The voice that came back was quiet and unhurried. A man’s voice. Careful with every word, like someone who had thought through this conversation before making the call.

“I have information about what your father is planning to do to Judith in the next few days. And I have documents. Things you signed early in this marriage that she does not know about yet. I am not calling to use them against you. I am calling because I think you have already chosen a side, and you just need someone to confirm that the door is open.”

Ethan said nothing.

“There is an address coming to your phone right now. Come tonight. Come alone, and do not tell your father or Elena. Whatever loyalty you are still holding onto for Richard Blackwood, leave it behind before you walk through that door. It will not serve you where this conversation is going.”

The call ended just like that.

Ethan sat there for a few more seconds.

Then he got up, left the bourbon where it was, and walked out into the night.

He was almost at his car when his phone showed a message from yet another number he did not know.

“She is starting to remember things. And she has people around her now who are helping her piece it together. If you do not move away from your father quickly, we will send her everything directly. Every document. Every instruction. Every lie. And when she reads it all, whatever small chance you still have with her will be finished completely.”

A second message came right after.

“Also, Marcus Kane. His interest in Judith is not about business, and it is not about you. It is personal. Find out why before your father does. Because your father already suspects, and he will use it.”

Ethan read both messages standing beside his car in the cold.

Marcus Kane.

He had been watching that man circle closer to Judith for weeks and had told himself it was rivalry, business positioning, the usual games powerful men played with each other using whoever was closest.

But this was the second time now that someone had pointed at Marcus and said the word personal.

A man protecting something personal was not playing games.

Ethan got into the car and started driving.

His mind was already working through everything, rearranging pieces, seeing the shape of things he had refused to look at directly until now. His father’s next move. Marcus Kane’s real motive. Judith alone across the city, not knowing how many people were circling her life right now with plans she knew nothing about.

He pressed down on the accelerator.

He was done sitting in the dark. Done letting his silence protect the wrong people.

Whatever this meeting tonight uncovered, he had already made the decision that mattered.

Judith and Lily were not going to become casualties of the Blackwood name.

He was going to make sure of that.

Whatever it cost him.