Chapter 23

Claire didn't call ahead. She took the elevator up to Edmund's private office at nine that night with Weston close behind her, her hands still shaking from the message, every careful instinct she'd ever had about this man burning away into something closer to fury than she'd ever directed at anyone in her life.

Edmund opened the door himself, and the moment Claire saw his face, some of her certainty wavered. He looked older than he had at dinner three nights ago — grey, hollowed, a man who hadn't slept either.

"You knew," she said, before he could speak. "You've known for six hours where Robert Cole is being held, and you said nothing."

"I found out four hours ago." His voice was unsteady, stripped entirely of the composed warmth he'd worn for a decade. "Not before that. I swear to you, Claire, I did not know before four hours ago."

"How is that supposed to make this better?"

"It isn't supposed to make anything better. It's supposed to be the truth, which is apparently a currency I have very little credibility left to spend with either of you." He stepped back, gesturing them inside with a hand that wasn't quite steady. "Sit down. Please. I'll tell you everything I know, and then you can decide exactly how much you hate me for it."

They didn't sit. Weston stood in the doorway, arms crossed, every line of him radiating barely contained violence.

"Talk," Weston said. "Now."

Edmund sank into his own chair like his legs had finally given out. "I received a call this afternoon. A voice I didn't recognize, modulated, careful — the kind of call you only get from someone who's done this before. They told me your father had been moved somewhere secure, that it would stay that way as long as I kept doing exactly what I've been doing for nine years, and that if I so much as breathed a word of concern to either of you, I would be made to understand exactly how replaceable I am in this operation."

"Operation," Claire repeated. "You keep using that word like Edmund Harcourt isn't the one running it."

"Because I'm not." For the first time, something that looked genuinely like fear crossed his face. "Claire, I built the financial architecture around your father's debt. I made the decisions that slowly strangled his company. I take full responsibility for every piece of cruelty I'm guilty of, and God knows that's more than enough to hate me for. But the people who just took Robert Cole, the people running Ashcombe — I don't control them. I'm not entirely certain anyone does, anymore. I think I started something nine years ago that's grown considerably larger than my own grief ever was."

"Then who's running it now?" Weston's voice was granite.

Edmund hesitated, long enough that Claire understood he was genuinely afraid to answer.

"I don't have a name," he said finally. "I have a location. A property in the Catskills, registered under a trust I recognized from an old Ashcombe filing years ago — the same group that handled the fallout after Vivian's father's collapse, if I'm not mistaken. I was never told who sits at the top of that trust. I was only ever told enough to be useful, the same careful, patient way I've treated everyone else in this story."

He pulled a slip of paper from his desk drawer, hand shaking as he wrote an address, sliding it across to Claire.

"This is everything I have," he said. "I'm giving it to you because whatever I've done, I never wanted it to end with an old man in a chair, unable to defend himself, paying for sins that were his son's father's, not his own."

Claire took the paper, her fingers cold around it. "Why should we trust this isn't another trap?"

"You shouldn't trust anything I tell you," Edmund said quietly. "You should trust the fact that I have nothing left to gain by lying to you tonight, and everything left to lose."

His phone rang.

Claire watched every ounce of color drain out of his face as he looked at the screen — a blocked number, flashing insistent and cold against the lamplight. He stared at it for a long moment before answering, his voice carefully, deliberately steady in a way that told Claire he was performing calm for whoever was on the other end.

"Yes," he said. A pause. "No, I haven't spoken to anyone." Another pause, longer this time, his jaw tightening until a muscle jumped visibly beneath his skin. "Understood. I'll make sure of it."

He hung up, and the hand holding the phone was shaking openly now.

"You need to go," he said, voice low and urgent, already standing, already moving toward the door to usher them out. "Right now. Both of you."

"Edmund, who was that?"

"I don't know. I've never known, that's the entire point of how they operate." He was pale, genuinely frightened now in a way that made the hair on the back of Claire's neck rise. "They know you're here. They know exactly how long you've been in this office. Claire, whatever you decide to do with that address, you cannot tell anyone else you have it. Not Elena. Not the police. Not Diane Whitfield. Whoever's listening to my calls is listening to a great deal more than just mine."

He opened the door, pushing them gently but firmly into the hallway, his voice dropping to barely a whisper as he said the last thing before closing it behind them.

"Trust no one you haven't personally watched prove themselves tonight," he said. "Because I promise you both — whoever's really running this, they've had far longer than nine years to learn exactly how to wear a friendly face."