Chapter 5 — Her Brother Was Never Missing

Sophia looked at the gun in her brother’s hand.

“Tell them to let me go.”

Thomas nodded to the man behind her. He released her arms but remained close.

She rubbed one wrist.

“Now tell me what this is.”

“Something I wanted to explain under better circumstances.”

“You were tied to a chair.”

Thomas glanced toward the office.

“It was a photograph.”

“There were three photographs.”

“I know.”

She reached into her apron and unfolded the first one. It shook in her hand.

Thomas looked at it as though she were showing him a receipt.

“I needed you to believe I was in danger.”

Her arm lowered.

No one spoke. Even Damian waited.

“I went to hospitals,” she said. “I called morgues. I spoke to a woman who thought she’d seen you begging outside a station in Marseille.”

Thomas’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“That wasn’t one of my leads.”

“I know that now.”

She folded the photograph carefully, following the worn creases.

Watching her do it was worse than watching her cry would have been.

Thomas stepped toward her.

“You were never supposed to be hurt.”

“A man searched the laundry room with a rifle. Your men shot the guards in their beds.”

“Costa’s orders.”

Damian moved away from the crate against which he had been forced.

“You approved the takeover.”

The guard nearest him raised his weapon. Damian stopped.

Thomas did not look back.

“I approved taking control of the estate. You insisted on making a spectacle of it.”

“And the bomb?” I asked.

Thomas turned to me.

“Also his contribution.”

“You sent the warning.”

A small smile answered before he did.

“I thought a photograph would get your attention faster than a threat.”

I remembered standing beside the sedan, looking down at the message. My driver had leaned across the passenger seat to ask what was wrong.

“You knew when it would explode.”

“I had enough notice to get you out.”

“Not my driver.”

Thomas looked impatient.

“I couldn’t alert everyone.”

Lily pressed a hand over her mouth.

“You let Damian think it worked,” I said.

“He became much more useful once he believed you were dead. So did your fiancée.”

Camila had been brought down from the walkway. She stood beside Damian, stripped of her weapon but still wearing my diamonds.

“You told us you could move the reserve without him,” she said.

“I told you I could obtain access.”

“You said we’d divide it.”

Thomas checked the terminal across the warehouse.

“We’re wasting time.”

I moved half a step toward Sophia. A rifle barrel stopped me.

Thomas saw the movement.

“She’s perfectly safe if you cooperate.”

“You’ve used that sentence before tonight.”

Lily looked at him.

“You said we’d leave together.”

Thomas sighed.

“You wanted access to your inheritance. I’m still offering it.”

“I wanted my brother to stop controlling me. I didn’t want him killed.”

“Then help me persuade him.”

I looked at Lily’s bruised face.

“How did you meet?”

She hesitated.

“He contacted me about a payment connected to Father’s estate. He said your office had been hiding information from me.”

Some of that information had been hidden. I knew it before she looked away.

Thomas had needed very little invention to make me the villain in her life.

“Did he tell you about Sophia?”

“He showed me a photograph. He said she would help bring you here if anything went wrong.”

Sophia stared at Lily.

“Did you know what he was telling me?”

“He said you were working with him.”

“I thought he was being tortured.”

Lily could not answer.

Thomas tapped his ring against the pistol frame, drawing our attention back to him.

“Enough.”

I listened to the distant rain and the warehouse ventilation. Somewhere behind the loading bay, a heavy relay clicked. Thomas glanced toward it before returning his attention to us.

He had equipment here beyond the terminal.

“Why this warehouse?” I asked.

“Because your father installed a private access station beneath the old dispatch office.”

“My father installed several.”

“This one survived your renovations.”

He had researched the infrastructure well. He had not researched everything that had happened after my father died.

“You were supposed to expose the payments,” Sophia said. “You told me people were getting hurt.”

Thomas looked back at her.

“They were. And everyone being paid to investigate kept looking away. I found a judge in the transfers. Then a minister. Then companies nobody could touch.”

“So you decided to join them?”

“I decided I was tired of begging people with power to do something.”

He lifted the gun slightly.

“They’ll answer me now.”

Sophia looked at the armed men surrounding us.

“You sound exactly like the people you said you hated.”

I let my gaze drift toward the terminal and then away.

“You could have asked Lily to use it months ago.”

“One heir isn’t enough.”

“So you needed both of us alive.”

Thomas pointed the pistol toward my chest.

“At the same time. Yes.”

“And you needed us frightened enough to do whatever you said.”

“I needed you here without an army.”

The fresh tracks in the tunnel. The unlocked phone. The lifted fence.

He had not chosen every step we took. He had offered several paths and made certain they all ended inside his warehouse.

“You knew Sophia would stay at the house,” I said.

Thomas looked at his sister.

“She doesn’t leave people behind.”

Sophia took the folded photograph and tore it once across the middle.

Thomas stopped tapping his ring.

“Soph.”

She tore it again.

“You should have come to me.”

“You would have tried to stop me.”

“Yes.”

She let the pieces fall.

“And you knew that. You didn’t trust me with the truth. You trusted me to suffer until I did what you wanted.”

Thomas’s expression softened in a way I disliked more than his threats.

“I can still give you a place beside me. You won’t have to work for men like him anymore.”

“I’m not standing beside you.”

He waited, as though she might reconsider after hearing herself.

She did not.

“What you did to me isn’t something money can fix,” she said.

Thomas lifted the pistol.

I stepped forward before the muzzle settled on her.

The guard struck my injured shoulder with his rifle stock. My arm went numb, but I stayed on my feet.

“You need me at that machine,” I said. “Remember that before your men damage something you can’t replace.”

Thomas lowered the weapon an inch.

“Then stop interfering.”

“Answer one question.”

“You’ve asked several.”

“What happens to me after I open Crown?”

He looked at Lily first. I saw him decide that he no longer needed her to believe him.

Then he looked at me.

“You die.”