chapter 257

Ethan

I absorbed everything without letting it show. "And what were you instructed to do?"

"He instructed us to kill you." A pause. "And your wife."

The room was completely quiet.

God, my wife...

I can't believe Victor Kane has the guts to target me and my pregnant wife.

Something moved through me that I did not let reach my face.

"He wanted you both dead," the man continued. He was talking now with the desperation of someone who believed information was currency and was spending everything he had. "He said you were a problem. He said the woman was the problem. He said as long as she was alive and holding shares in that company he couldn't..." He stopped.

"Victor Kane. Where is he?" I asked through gritted teeth.

"The Meridian hotel." He said it immediately without hesitation. "Top floor suite. He's been there two weeks."

"Security detail?"

"He has eight men rotating four-hour shifts. He doesn't go out. Everything comes to him."

I looked at him. Then at the other three in turn.

The second man was looking at his knees. The third was looking at the wall. The fourth — the one who had been looking at the floor when I entered — was young. Mid-twenties. He was the one I had noticed keeping his face turned away since I walked in, and I had filed that detail without yet understanding it.

"Very well then," I said, reaching inside my jacket.

I brought out my pistol and the first man's eyes widened in horror. "Wait... we told you everything.."

"You did," I said.

"We cooperated..."

"Yes."

"You said..." He looked at Daniel. "He said..."

I hadn't said anything. Daniel hadn't promised anything.

The assumption of survival in exchange for information was something these men had constructed from their own need rather than from anything anyone in this room had offered them.

I raised the gun and pointed it on their head.

"No... please..." He wasn't able to complete his sentence as I shot him in the head.

The second man tried to stand against the restraints but shot him before he could even move.

The third was already looking away when the third shot came and I did not consider that a mercy, simply an orientation.

Three deaths.

I turned to the fourth, he was crying.

Not quietly — fully, completely, the way people cry when they are no longer managing anything about their situation.

He was looking at me with red eyes as his breath was coming in pieces and his hands were shaking in the restraints.

"Please," he said. "Please. I have a son. My wife is pregnant." The words came out fractured. "Please don't. My son needs me. My wife... she's seven months pregnant.... Please, I'm begging you, I'll do anything..."

I looked at him.

I let him talk. I stood in front of him and let him say every word.

Then I said, "You have a son."

"Yes." Desperate. "He's four years old. His name is..."

"And your wife is pregnant."

"Yes. Seven months. Please, I..."

"You took a contract," I said, "to kill my pregnant wife."

He stopped.

"My wife." I looked at him steadily. "Who is in her final month, who has been through a plane crash, three months of threat and fear and fighting for something she built and deserves. You took money to end that. To end her. To end my children before they had drawn a single breath."

He was shaking.

"You thought about your son," I said. "You thought about your pregnant wife when you were sitting in that room begging me. Why didn't you think about them before you took the contract?"

"I needed the money... I didn't have a choice..."

"You had the same choice my wife's security detail had every morning they showed up to protect her." My voice was level. Completely level. "The same choice everyone makes when they decide what they're willing to do for money. You made yours."

"Please..."

"You aimed at a pregnant woman," I said.

He broke down completely but It didn't move me.

What moved me was the image of Serena's face when she picked up that phone in the car. The colour leaving her. The thing in her eyes that no one who loved her should ever have to see put there.

He was still talking when I raised the gun and shot him.

The room went quiet.

Not the comfortable quiet of a room at rest. The specific, heavy quiet that follows the end of something.

I lowered the gun and looked at the four dead bodies on the floor for a moment.

Then I straightened my jacket and walked to the door where Daniel was standing very still with his hands clasped in front of him.

"Clean this up," I said.

"Yes, sir."

"And get me everything on the Meridian's top floor. Layout, entry points, shift rotation for Kane's security detail. I want it in two hours."

"Already compiling, sir."

I walked out.

In the car I sat in the back, looked at my hands and thought about a man who had tried to kill my wife and had invoked his pregnant wife as a reason I should let him live.

The symmetry of it was not lost on me.

The difference was simple.

The difference was that I had never aimed at anyone who wasn't already aimed at something I loved.

I picked up my phone and called Ray.

He answered in two rings.

"Victor Kane," I said. "It is on the top floor of the Meridian hotel. I want to know everything about his operation, his finances, his connections, his next move — everything you have and everything you can build in the next twenty minutes."

"I've been building it for three months," Ray said. "I've been waiting for you to ask."

"Then you're ready."

"Yes."

"Good." I looked out the window at the city moving past. "Because this ends soon. All of it."

I hung up.