Chapter 8 - Ten Minutes From Goodbye
Prescott’s men searched Elias before he came within twenty feet of me.
No weapon.
No phone.
No tracking device.
Nothing.
I still wanted to shoot him.
“You have sixty seconds.”
Elias looked through the glass toward the twins.
“They’re worse than I expected.”
“Fifty-five.”
“I didn’t kill Genevieve.”
“Rourke says you planted the device.”
“I planted a tracker.”
My anger shifted.
“What?”
“On her car.”
“Why?”
“Crosby told me she had Silas Rowan’s ledger.”
“Did she?”
“I don’t know.”
“Forty seconds.”
“I followed her for three weeks.”
Adeline appeared behind me.
The second Elias saw her, his face changed.
“Genevieve.”
Adeline recoiled.
“No.”
He stared.
“You’re Addie.”
“You knew about me?”
“Genevieve told me.”
I turned on him.
“My wife told everybody except me?”
Elias almost smiled.
“Maybe you were difficult to talk to.”
“Thirty seconds.”
He became serious.
“I put the tracker under her rear bumper. That’s all.”
“Who planted the explosive?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“No.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because Crosby wants me dead now too.”
“Why?”
“I stole something.”
Adeline laughed bitterly.
“Apparently that runs in the family.”
Elias reached toward his coat.
Six guns rose.
He stopped.
“Inside pocket. Envelope.”
Prescott retrieved it.
Inside was a list of names.
Judges.
Police officials.
Business owners.
Several people I recognized from Vane’s organization.
At the bottom:
Kyle Benton. Samuel Krell.
Our two infiltrators.
“How did you get this?”
“I worked for Crosby for twenty-seven years.”
“Genevieve said you hated me.”
“I did.”
“Past tense?”
Elias looked around my estate.
“Mostly.”
“Why?”
“Arthur left you everything.”
“Our father left me a business filled with enemies and debt.”
“He left me nothing but a name I wasn’t allowed to use.”
I almost laughed.
“You think that was a gift?”
“For a nineteen-year-old kid watching his father raise another son from newspaper photographs? Yes.”
I saw it then.
Not a rival.
A wound.
My father had created another damaged son and left us both to discover each other after his death.
“What changed?”
“Genevieve.”
My chest tightened.
“How?”
“She found me first.”
Of course she did.
“She came to my apartment carrying a photograph of you and the children.”
I said nothing.
“She told me I could hate you if I wanted, but if my hatred ever touched Jonah or Blythe, she would bury me herself.”
Adeline smiled through tears.
“That sounds like her.”
“She wasn’t afraid of me.”
“No,” I said. “She wasn’t afraid of much.”
Elias looked at me.
“She spent months convincing me Arthur’s sins weren’t yours.”
“And you believed her?”
“Eventually.”
“Then why keep working for Vane?”
“Because Genevieve asked me to.”
Silence.
“She wanted someone inside.”
Prescott stared.
“You were her informant.”
“Yes.”
Everything rearranged itself.
The warnings Genevieve had received.
Her secret investigation.
The video.
“She was building a case.”
Elias nodded.
“Against Crosby.”
“Why didn’t you come after she died?”
“Because I thought Crosby had people inside your organization.”
“He did.”
“I didn’t know who.”
“So you disappeared.”
“No.”
His expression hardened.
“I stayed beside him.”
For two years, Elias had remained inside the organization of the man he believed responsible for Genevieve’s death.
“Why?”
“To finish what she started.”
He pointed toward the list.
“I finally found the financial structure connected to Rowan.”
“The ledger?”
“No. Better.”
He looked at Adeline.
“Silas’s ledger is old evidence. This is current. Money laundering. Bribery. Murder payments.”
“Genevieve?”
His face darkened.
“I found a payment made two days before her crash.”
“To whom?”
“A contractor named Victor Sloane.”
Prescott knew the name.
“Explosives specialist.”
I went cold.
“Where is he?”
“Dead.”
“Convenient.”
“Crosby killed him afterward.”
“Then Crosby ordered it.”
Elias hesitated.
“What?”
“The payment didn’t come from Crosby’s personal account.”
“Whose?”
“I couldn’t trace it.”
I stepped closer.
“You walked into my house claiming Crosby didn’t kill her.”
“I said he wasn’t the man who killed her.”
“Semantics?”
“No.”
“He approved the operation.”
“So who ordered it?”
Elias looked past me.
“Arthur Mercer.”
For one second, I genuinely thought I had misheard.
“My father was dead six years before Genevieve.”
“Yes.”
“Then try again.”
“Arthur created the order years earlier.”
Adeline frowned.
“What?”
Elias sat.
“In 2009, Arthur discovered Silas Rowan had records tying Mercer companies to money laundering.”
My stomach tightened.
“Arthur had a contingency agreement with Vane. If any Rowan heir attempted to expose those records, Vane was authorized to remove the threat.”
“Remove?”
“Kill.”
I stared.
“My father ordered a standing death sentence against the Rowan family.”
“Yes.”
“And Crosby used it against Genevieve.”
“Yes.”
I wanted to vomit.
Genevieve had died partly because she married me into a war our fathers started.
Adeline looked devastated.
“So Crosby pulled the trigger.”
“Essentially.”
“But Arthur loaded the gun.”
“Yes.”
My children slept feet away carrying both bloodlines.
Mercer.
Rowan.
Born between two families poisoned by men who died before they understood the cost of what they created.
Then an alarm sounded from the medical room.
Again.
I ran.
Blythe’s pressure had collapsed.
Yates shouted orders.
Her infection had triggered septic shock.
“Dad…”
I reached her.
“Right here.”
“Cold.”
Nurses covered her.
Jonah cried from the other bed.
“Make her better!”
“I’m trying.”
Blythe’s eyes rolled.
“Blythe!”
Yates pushed medication.
Nothing.
Her pressure continued falling.
“Lawson, move.”
“No.”
“You need to let us work!”
I stumbled backward.
Adeline grabbed my hand.
We stood there watching.
Five minutes.
Ten.
Twenty.
Finally Yates turned toward me.
His face told me before he spoke.
“We’re running out of options.”
“No.”
“Her organs are beginning to struggle.”
“No.”
“Lawson—”
“What do you need?”
“A miracle.”
“Then make one.”
“I’m not God!”
His voice cracked.
The room became silent.
Yates looked ashamed.
“I’m sorry.”
Adeline stepped forward.
“What about transplant now?”
“Impossible.”
“Why?”
“Conditioning would kill her.”
“What if you don’t condition?”
“The donor cells won’t engraft properly.”
“What if you do something partial?”
“There are experimental approaches.”
“Use them.”
Yates shook his head.
“They’re not standard.”
“She’s dying.”
“I know.”
“Then standard has failed!”
He looked at Adeline.
Then me.
“There is an emergency haploidentical rescue protocol used in extreme cases.”
Hope again.
Tiny.
Dangerous.
“What does it do?”
“Minimal conditioning. Donor cells combined with intensive immune support. The chance of graft failure is high. Graft-versus-host disease risk is significant.”
“Chance she survives without it?”
Yates said nothing.
“Franklin.”
“Very low.”
“Chance with it?”
“I can’t responsibly give you a number.”
“Would you do it for your daughter?”
His face changed.
“Yes.”
“Do it.”
Adeline stepped closer.
“Take the cells.”
“We only collected enough for one full rescue dose.”
My heart stopped.
“One?”
“Yes.”
“And tomorrow’s collection?”
“If Adeline remains healthy, we can collect for the second child.”
Blythe was dying now.
Jonah was more stable.
The decision arrived.
The decision Jonah had already made in the kitchen.
Give it to Blythe.
I looked at him.
My son stared back.
He knew.
“Dad.”
I approached.
“You remember what I said?”
“No.”
“Give it to her.”
My eyes burned.
“Jonah.”
“She’s little.”
“You’re the same age.”
“She’s my sister.”
My six-year-old son looked at me with a courage I had spent forty years pretending to possess.
“Save Blythe.”
I kissed his forehead.
“I’m saving both of you.”
The emergency transplant began at 9:17 p.m.
Adeline’s cells entered Blythe’s bloodstream slowly.
Nothing dramatic happened.
No flash.
No miracle.
Just a clear bag of cells hanging beside a dying little girl.
At 10:03, Blythe’s oxygen dropped.
At 10:11, she stopped responding.
At 10:14, Yates called additional emergency staff.
At 10:18, the monitor screamed.
I held her hand.
“Daddy’s here.”
Nothing.
“Blythe.”
No response.
“Baby, open your eyes.”
Her fingers were limp.
“Please.”
I had threatened men.
Begged doctors.
Bribed officials.
Bought entire buildings because somebody annoyed me.
Now I whispered the smallest request of my life.
“Please don’t leave me.”
The monitor changed.
Yates looked up.
“Wait.”
“What?”
Her heart rhythm stabilized slightly.
Pressure remained terrible.
But it rose.
One point.
Then another.
Yates stared.
“Come on, sweetheart.”
Another point.
Adeline covered her mouth.
Jonah began whispering from his bed.
“What are you saying?” I asked.
He looked at me.
“The song Mommy sang.”
He began humming.
Adeline joined him.
Genevieve’s lullaby.
The same melody from the music box.
I held Blythe’s hand while her brother and aunt sang.
Ten minutes later, her pressure was still dangerously low.
But she was alive.
Yates finally exhaled.
“It’s not over.”
“I know.”
“The next seventy-two hours—”
“I know.”
A guard rushed into the room.
“Mr. Mercer.”
I turned.
“What?”
“Prescott needs you downstairs.”
“Not now.”
“He says it’s about Vane.”
“I don’t care.”
“He found Odette’s son.”
That got my attention.
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
Relief hit.
Then the guard continued.
“But Malcolm wasn’t alone.”
I frowned.
“Who was with him?”
“Crosby Vane.”
I stood.
The guard’s face remained strange.
“Mr. Mercer…”
May you like
“What?”
“Vane is dead.”
