Chương 5
“Fine.”
“No one scares my mother.”
“Agreed.”
I hated how quickly I had started negotiating.
I hated more that part of me was relieved.
Then Marco’s phone buzzed again.
He read the message.
“Sir.”
Dominic turned.
Marco held up the screen.
“The SUV entered the estate tonight.”
My throat tightened.
“Where is it?”
Marco looked toward the rain-dark windows.
“Still here.”
Charles said nothing.
Vanessa did.
“Oh, God.”
Dominic turned to her.
“What?”
She covered her mouth.
“What did you do?” Charles asked.
His composure cracked for the first time.
Vanessa looked at him with naked fear.
“I didn’t know she was coming tonight.”
“What did you do?”
“I told him to wait.”
Dominic stepped toward her.
“Told who?”
Vanessa shook her head.
“I thought we had another week.”
“Another week for what?”
She backed away.
Charles grabbed her arm.
“Stop talking.”
That was his mistake.
I saw it in the way Vanessa looked at his hand.
Not fear this time.
Anger.
Old anger.
Deep enough to outlive loyalty.
She yanked free.
“He was supposed to scare her off,” she said.
Charles went white.
I could barely hear my own voice.
“Scare me off from what?”
Vanessa looked at me.
Then at Dominic.
Then finally at her father.
“From finding out why her father really died.”
For a moment, I thought I had misheard her.
Rain ticked against the tall windows.
Somewhere deeper in the house, a door shut.
Charles moved first.
He crossed the space between us so quickly that Dominic stepped in front of Vanessa.
“Enough,” Charles said.
Vanessa laughed, but the sound broke in the middle.
“You keep saying that like it works.”
“Vanessa.”
“No.”
Her voice shook.
“You wanted this contained.”
Charles looked at me.
Not angry.
Not yet.
Assessing.
“What exactly has she told you?” Dominic asked.
Vanessa stared at her father.
“Nothing he doesn’t already suspect.”
“I suspect you’re both lying.”
Dominic’s tone stayed quiet.
“That’s different.”
Charles adjusted his cuff again, but his fingers slipped against the button.
I noticed.
So did Vanessa.
She smiled without humor.
“There.”
She pointed at his hand.
“That.”
Charles stopped touching the cuff.
“You’re upset.”
“No, I’m finally paying attention.”
He looked at Dominic.
“She’s been drinking.”
“I had two glasses of wine.”
“You’ve been unstable for weeks.”
Vanessa went still.
I knew that tactic.
Not the exact words.
The shape of it.
Make the person sound unreliable before they say anything dangerous.
My father had once called it poisoning the witness before there was a courtroom.
I hadn’t understood what he meant when I was sixteen.
I did now.
Vanessa looked at me.
“You want to know why I kept requesting you?”
My stomach tightened.
Dominic said, “Vanessa.”
She ignored him.
“The first order wasn’t mine.”
I stared at her.
“What?”
“My father had someone place it.”
Charles closed his eyes briefly.
Not guilt.
Frustration.
Like she had missed a cue.
Vanessa continued.
“He wanted to see if you were really the same Avery Carter.”
The room seemed suddenly too warm.
“Same as what?”
“As Daniel Carter’s daughter.”
My father’s name landed harder than the slap.
I had not heard a stranger say it in years.
Dominic turned toward me.
I could feel him watching my face.
I kept mine still.
“How did you know my father?”
Vanessa looked at Charles.
He said nothing.
“Tell her,” she said.
Charles’s expression hardened.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know enough.”
“You know fragments.”
“Then correct me.”
He looked at Dominic instead.
“This is a private family matter.”
“No,” I said.
He shifted his attention back to me.
“My father is dead.”
I stepped closer.
“You don’t get to call anything involving him private.”
Charles held my gaze.
“You should be careful with what you think you want.”
I almost laughed.
“That’s what people say when the truth is bad for them.”
His eyes narrowed.
Dominic glanced toward Marco.
“Find that SUV.”
Marco nodded and spoke quietly into his radio.
Charles shook his head.
“You’re making a mistake.”
Dominic’s mouth tightened.
“Get in line.”
Vanessa pressed both palms against her temples.
“I didn’t know about the death until last month.”
I looked at her.
“What did you know?”
“That your father worked for Whitmore Logistics.”
“He worked at a machine plant.”
“No.”
Charles’s voice cut through hers.
“He contracted with us.”
I turned toward him.
“Doing what?”
“That’s complicated.”
“No, it isn’t.”
I could hear my own breathing.
“You say a noun.”
Charles gave me a long look.
“He handled compliance.”
That word made no sense beside my memories of Dad’s work boots, his yellow lunch cooler, the oil under his fingernails.
“Compliance for what?”
“Freight.”
Vanessa laughed again.
This time there was no humor in it at all.
“Say the rest.”
Charles’s jaw tightened.
She looked at me.
“Your father was auditing warehouse shipments.”
A strange pressure built behind my ribs.
“He worked machinery.”
“That was his cover job.”
Charles snapped, “Vanessa.”
She turned on him.
“You told me he was an internal problem.”
“I told you nothing of the sort.”
“You said he had become unreliable.”
Dominic looked between them.
“What was he auditing?”
Charles said nothing.
Vanessa did.
“Pharmaceutical shipments.”
The room tilted.
Not because I understood.
Because suddenly I remembered a cardboard box in our old kitchen.
Dad had come home late carrying it.
No label.
No company markings.
Mom had asked what it was.
He had said paperwork.
She had told him paperwork did not usually rattle.
He had laughed.
Then he took the box into the garage.
I never saw it again.
I had forgotten that for years.
The memory returned so sharply I could smell burned coffee and the lemon cleaner Mom used on the countertops.
“What kind of pharmaceutical shipments?” I asked.
Vanessa looked at Charles.
He remained silent.
Dominic answered the question for him.
“The kind you don’t want audited.”
Charles’s eyes moved to Dominic.
“Careful.”
Dominic’s face changed.
It was subtle.
May you like
But the softness disappeared.
“You keep saying that.”
