Chapter 14 - Room 1708
The place where our family began was the hotel suite where Damian and I had been drugged.
Room 1708.
The hotel had closed after the scandal. Sterling Global still owned the building through bankruptcy court.
Julian demanded Damian come alone with access to the offshore funds.
We went together.
Not because it was wise. Because Julian expected us to behave like separate pieces. We were finished helping him.
Federal agents surrounded the block, but Julian had wired the seventeenth floor with motion sensors. Any breach would trigger explosives.
Damian wore a hidden transmitter. I carried no weapon.
The elevator opened to a hallway stripped of carpet and light fixtures.
Room 1708 stood at the end.
The door was open.
Inside, Noah and Mia sat tied to chairs but unharmed. Julian stood behind them with a gun.
The room looked smaller than I remembered.
Five years of nightmares had made it enormous.
Julian smiled. “The happy couple.”
“We’re not a couple,” I said.
Damian glanced at me. “Timing.”
Even Noah made a tiny sound that might have been a laugh.
Julian’s smile faded. “Open the account.”
Damian placed a laptop on the table.
“You release them first.”
“No.”
“Then no money.”
Julian aimed at Noah.
Damian entered the password.
I watched Mia’s hands. She was working one wrist against the plastic tie. Smart girl. Too smart for five.
I began talking.
“You planned the first night because Damian embarrassed you.”
Julian shrugged. “He had everything.”
“So you drugged him.”
“I wanted photographs.”
“You chose me because Vanessa pointed me out.”
“She said you were pathetic enough to be believed.”
The words should have hurt. They did not. Not anymore.
I stepped closer.
Julian moved the gun toward me.
“Stop.”
“You keep blaming Damian for having more. Charles for taking control. Vanessa for failing you. Who do you blame for the pension money?”
His eyes narrowed.
“Those people never knew it was gone.”
“They knew when they couldn’t retire.”
“Don’t become moral now.”
“I’m not moral. I hit Claire when I was angry. I ignored signs about my stepmother for years because leaving was easier. I almost separated my children because fear sounded like good judgment.”
The room went still.
“I made choices,” I said. “So did you.”
Mia freed one hand.
Julian did not see.
Damian did.
He kept typing.
“The transfer is ready,” he said.
Julian leaned toward the screen.
Mia grabbed Noah’s chair and pulled. Both children toppled sideways.
I lunged.
Julian fired.
The bullet struck the wall.
Damian hit him from the side. The laptop flew through the window, still attached to its power cord, and hung over the street seventeen floors below.
Julian and Damian crashed against the broken frame.
I cut the twins free with a piece of glass.
“Run to the hall!”
They ran.
Julian struck Damian’s injured hip. Damian fell.
Julian reached for the gun.
I kicked it away.
He grabbed my ankle and pulled me down.
For one second, I was back in that room five years earlier—dizzy, powerless, unable to name what was happening.
Then Mia shouted from the doorway, “Mom!”
I drove my knee into Julian’s chest and crawled free.
Damian got up and pinned him against the window.
Julian laughed, breathless. “You won’t kill me.”
“No,” Damian said. “I won’t become you.”
Federal agents entered after Mia triggered the fire alarm, which disabled part of Julian’s sensor system.
They arrested him alive.
Outside, dawn touched the buildings.
Noah held one of my hands. Mia held the other. Damian walked beside us, limping.
At the ambulance, Mia looked up.
“Are you two getting married now?”
“No,” I said.
Damian said, “Your mother has rejected me very clearly.”
“I did not reject—”
He looked at me.
I stopped.
Noah sighed. “Grown-ups are confusing.”
He was right.
Then an agent approached with a sealed envelope recovered from Julian’s coat.
Inside was a recent photograph of a woman standing outside our house.
On the back was one name.
LILY HART.
The mother whose baby had supposedly been stolen was alive.
May you like
And she had been watching us.
