Chương 6
My throat tightened.
“He knew something,” I whispered.
Gabriel looked at me.
“Emma.”
“No.”
I looked at the picture.
“He knew something and he was scared.”
Nobody argued.
Because they had all seen it.
The late nights.
The phone turned down.
The notebook.
The warnings.
Lucy appeared in the doorway holding a glass of water.
Nobody noticed her until she spoke.
“Is Dad in trouble?”
The question broke something.
Not in the room.
In us.
Because all of our fear had been about the danger around Thomas.
None of us had considered what it meant for a child to hear adults talk about her father like he was part of a crime.
I moved toward her.
“No, sweetheart.”
It was the kind of lie parents tell because the truth is too large.
She looked at Gabriel.
“Are you going to find out what happened?”
He looked at her for a long moment.
Then he nodded.
“Yes.”
“You promise?”
I almost interrupted.
Promises were dangerous.
Especially from powerful people.
But Gabriel answered before I could.
“Yes.”
Lucy studied his face.
Children were better judges than adults because they had not learned how useful pretending could be.
“Okay.”
She walked back toward the kitchen.
Gabriel watched her leave.
Then he picked up the notebook.
“We go to Warehouse Fourteen.”
Nolan immediately shook his head.
“No.”
Gabriel looked at him.
“That wasn’t a suggestion.”
“It’s exactly what whoever sent that picture wants.”
“Maybe.”
Gabriel closed the notebook.
“But if they wanted me away from it, they should have chosen a better way to convince me.”
Nolan looked frustrated.
“You don’t understand.”
“No.”
Gabriel looked at him.
“I don’t.”
A pause.
“That’s why I’m going.”
The mansion fell quiet again.
But this time the silence felt different.
Not like fear.
Like the moment before a decision became permanent.
I looked at the blue notebook.
At Thomas’s handwriting.
At the photograph of a place where he had stood six years ago.
A place where someone had wanted him to stop asking questions.
And I knew one thing.
Whatever we found at Warehouse Fourteen had already waited six years.
It could wait one more night.
But we could not.
But we could not leave that night.
Not because Gabriel wanted to chase a mystery.
Not because I wanted answers.
Because someone had already noticed the notebook existed.
And someone had already decided we were not supposed to find out why.
Gabriel made one phone call from the study.
I did not hear the entire conversation.
The walls in that house were thick, and the mansion had been built in a time when people valued privacy more than comfort.
But I heard enough.
“Cancel tomorrow’s meetings.”
A pause.
“No, all of them.”
Another pause.
“Because I said so.”
He ended the call and stood there for a moment with the phone still in his hand.
It was strange seeing a man who controlled hundreds of employees look uncertain in his own home.
“You’re really going,” I said.
He looked at me.
“Yes.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes.”
I glanced toward the windows.
The storm had slowed, but the roads would still be dangerous.
“You don’t even know what you’re walking into.”
His expression changed slightly.
“That’s usually when people walk into the worst things.”
I almost told him that was exactly the kind of sentence rich men said before other people suffered the consequences.
But I stopped.
Because Gabriel was not asking someone else to go.
He was going himself.
That did not make him innocent.
It did not erase the rumors.
It did not change the fact that my daughter had been standing in front of him because she was afraid.
But it mattered.
“Why do you care?” I asked.
The question came out sharper than I intended.
Gabriel did not pretend not to understand.
“About Thomas?”
“Yes.”
He looked down at the notebook.
“My father spent his life teaching me that people were assets.”
The words were unexpected.
“He was wrong.”
I waited.
Gabriel looked toward the hallway where Lucy had disappeared.
“I think I spent years proving I wasn’t him.”
“And were you?”
He looked back at me.
The honesty in his face surprised me.
“Sometimes.”
That answer stayed with me.
Not because it was impressive.
Because it was uncomfortable.
Most powerful people protected themselves with explanations.
Gabriel offered a confession.
Nolan entered the study holding his coat.
“I’m coming.”
Gabriel did not look at him.
“No.”
“You’ll need someone who knows the company records.”
“You’ll need to answer questions first.”
Nolan nodded slowly.
“Fair.”
It was the first time all evening that they sounded like two people instead of enemies.
Two people who had known each other too long.
“I need to make one thing clear,” Nolan said.
Gabriel finally looked at him.
“I don’t know who killed Thomas.”
My stomach dropped.
The room went silent.
Nolan seemed to realize what he had admitted.
But he did not take it back.
“I said I don’t know.”
“You said killed,” Gabriel replied.
Nolan looked away.
“I chose the wrong word.”
“No.”
Gabriel’s voice hardened.
“You chose the word you believed.”
Nolan did not answer.
That was the problem with silence.
Sometimes it protected people.
Sometimes it exposed them.
I went upstairs to get Lucy’s coat.
Not because she was coming.
Because I needed a reason to leave the room.
I needed a moment where nobody was watching my face.
In Lucy’s room, her backpack sat beside the bed.
The blue notebook had spent the afternoon changing everything.
A child’s notebook.
A dead man’s handwriting.
A company’s buried history.
I sat on the edge of her bed.
For a few seconds, I just listened.
The house was never truly quiet.
There were always sounds.
The heating system.
The old pipes.
The distant movement of staff finishing their work.
A house like that never slept.
It only became less awake.
Lucy appeared in the doorway.
“You’re going.”
I looked up.
“Yes.”
She came inside.
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