Chapter 5 — He Had One Choice

I left the hospital against medical advice.

Ethan met me at the service entrance with a wool coat and a list of employees who had offered to work without pay.

"Tell them no," I said as he helped me into the car. "Use the emergency fund for three weeks of payroll. If this lasts longer, Hearthline Brands will license the recipes to pop-up kitchens outside the city."

"You planned for that?"

"I planned for a fire. This is only a different kind."

We drove past the flagship restaurant. A red closure notice covered the front door. Inside, chairs stood upside down on tables that should have been full for lunch.

My body still ached from the fall. Every turn pulled at the bruises along my spine, but grief had burned through exhaustion and left something harder behind.

"Go to Rachel's office," I told Ethan. "Give her the backup drive yourself."

"What about you?"

"I'm collecting the original vendor contracts from Brooklyn."

"You shouldn't be alone."

I showed him the diamond ring.

"Cole security can locate this anywhere in the state."

We separated outside Rachel's building.

Ten minutes later, a black SUV struck the rear of my car at an intersection.

The impact snapped my head forward. Before I could unlock the door, a man smashed the passenger window. Cold air and glass rushed over me.

A cloth covered my mouth.

The street disappeared.

I woke tied to a metal chair.

Salt hung in the air. Rain hammered a corrugated roof, and somewhere beyond the walls, waves struck pilings beneath an abandoned shipyard.

Vanessa stood in front of me wearing cream cashmere and spotless boots.

"You look terrible," she said.

"Losing a baby will do that."

For half a second, her expression shifted.

Then she shrugged.

"You shouldn't have walked outside in front of all those reporters."

"You shouldn't have paid them."

She lifted her phone and turned the screen toward me. Live video showed officers sealing the final Harbor & Hearth location.

"Seven restaurants," she said. "Gone."

"Seven leases. The company survives."

Her smile vanished.

"Not after today."

Two men watched from the loading doors. A third stood beside a table covered with zip ties, phones, and two handguns.

I twisted my hands behind the chair and tapped the ring against its metal frame three times.

A pause.

Two more.

Vanessa paced closer.

"You could have left quietly. But you took Bennett shares. You made Adrian question me. You even survived that fall."

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Pause.

Tap. Tap.

"You promised to stop if he signed," I said, keeping her talking.

"I promised to stop the business pressure. Technically, it ends when the business no longer exists."

"The false health reports? The photographs? The suppliers?"

"All me."

Her pride was stronger than her caution.

I pressed the edge of the diamond setting. A tiny recording indicator vibrated once against my finger.

"And the reporters outside my home?"

"I told one photographer to make sure you couldn't retreat inside. I didn't tell anyone to push you. That was a lovely accident."

"Just like this kidnapping?"

Vanessa bent until her face was inches from mine.

"No. This is the first honest thing I've done."

The ring vibrated twice.

Signal transmitted.

Now I had to stay alive long enough for someone to follow it.

Vanessa straightened. "Do you want to know the funniest part? Adrian will come. He will see both of us, and he will choose me while you watch."

"You're not tied to a chair."

"I will be when he arrives."

The warehouse doors rattled forty minutes later.

Engines roared outside. Men shouted. Light swept through the cracks in the walls.

Vanessa moved quickly. One of the kidnappers bound her wrists with a loose plastic tie and dragged her to the opposite side of the warehouse. Another struck my already bruised ribs until I sagged against the ropes.

Blood filled my mouth.

The doors burst inward.

Adrian entered with four security officers behind him.

His gaze found Vanessa first.

"Let her go."

The man holding her pressed a gun beneath her jaw. A second kidnapper pushed a barrel against my temple.

"One woman leaves with you," he said. "Choose."

Adrian's security team raised their weapons.

Red dots appeared on Adrian's chest from somewhere in the rafters.

"Put them down," he ordered.

The guards obeyed.

Vanessa began to sob.

"Adrian, please. I don't want to die."

I tried to speak, but pain folded the warehouse in and out of focus. Blood from my side had soaked through my sweater and pooled beneath the chair.

Adrian looked at me.

For a moment, I saw the man who had once carried me six blocks through snow because we could not afford an ambulance. The man who had spent nights beside my first hospital bed, promising I was all he had left.

He took one step toward me.

Vanessa screamed.

His body turned toward her before his mind appeared to decide.

"Clara," he said, his voice breaking. "I'm sorry. Hold on a little longer."

He pointed to Vanessa.

"Her. Release her."

The answer did not hurt.

It only confirmed what I had known since the bookstore.

The kidnappers shoved Vanessa forward. Adrian caught her, cut the loose tie from her wrists, and shielded her with his body.

"Everyone backs out," the gunman shouted. "You follow us, the other one dies."

Adrian hesitated.

Vanessa collapsed against him, crying that she could not breathe. He lifted her and retreated toward the doors while his team covered them.

His eyes remained on me until the steel doors slammed shut.

Then the man behind me laughed.

"Your sister paid extra to make sure there wasn't a body."

They cut the ropes from the chair but bound my wrists and ankles. Two men carried me through a rear door onto a rain-lashed dock.

A fishing boat moved as a shadow beyond the breakwater.

I struck the ring against the railing, but no vibration answered. The diamond had cracked during the beating.

One kidnapper pried it from my finger.

"Expensive."

"Keep it," I whispered.

He threw the ring onto the dock and lifted me over the rail.

The Atlantic swallowed every sound.

Cold drove the air from my lungs. My coat dragged me downward, and the ropes made swimming impossible.

Above me, the broken ring shone once beneath a dock light.

Adrian had promised that if I ever used its signal, he would be the first person to reach me.

He had reached me.

He had simply chosen someone else.

I stopped fighting the water.

Then a beam of white light cut across the darkness, and a fishing net tightened beneath my sinking body.