Chapter 9 - The Price of a Mother
Norah answered without speaking.
Her own voice came through the receiver, recorded and distorted. “If you want to see Elise Vale alive, come to the old courthouse before sunrise. Come without Lucian.”
The call ended.
Lucian took the phone from her hand. “You’re not going.”
“Then they’ll move her.”
“That is what they want you to believe.”
“She may be my mother.”
“She is also connected to every person who has tried to reach you.”
Norah stepped closer. “You were allowed to spend years investigating my family while I knew nothing. You do not get to lock me in a room now and call it love.”
Lucian’s face tightened. “I am trying not to become the man you’re afraid I am.”
“Then don’t make my choices for me.”
Gideon quietly placed a second phone on the table. “We can track the signal if she goes.”
Lucian looked at him. “You’re agreeing with her?”
“I’m agreeing that she is going whether we approve or not.”
Maya drove Norah to the courthouse in a plain sedan. Lucian followed at a distance with Gideon and two agents. Norah wore a wire beneath her sweater and carried no weapon, though the weight of Lucian’s spare pistol pressed against her ankle.
The old courthouse had been closed after a fire damaged the upper floors. Its stone entrance was covered by scaffolding, and the interior smelled of rain and ash. Norah crossed the lobby alone.
“You came,” Celia Rane said.
She stood beneath the cracked statue of justice, dressed in a navy suit, her silver hair pinned neatly at her neck. She looked exactly as she did on television: composed, intelligent, impossible to rattle.
Elise stood beside her.
Norah knew her face immediately despite the years. Her mother’s hair had turned white at the temples, and a thin scar curved from her jaw to her collarbone. But the eyes were the same eyes that had watched Norah sleep when she was a child.
“Mom,” Norah whispered.
Elise lifted a trembling hand. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“You called me.”
“Celia called you.”
“Where is Jonah?”
“Safe for the moment,” Celia said. “Ethan has him at the north entrance.”
Norah stared at her. “You are the one behind this.”
“I am the one who understands what happens when powerful men decide the law is a game.”
“You were paid by them.”
“I was useful to them, and they were useful to me. That is how the city functions.”
Elise shook her head. “Celia sold the witness list. Your father found out.”
“And you helped her.”
Elise’s tears fell silently. “I thought I could save you.”
“You left me in a burning house.”
“I left a body that was not mine and took the ledger. I believed the threat would end.”
“It followed me into my marriage.”
Elise looked toward the entrance. “Because Lucian’s family never stopped using the port.”
“Lucian is not his father.”
“But he wears the same name.”
The courthouse doors exploded inward.
Gideon shoved Norah to the floor as bullets struck the stone behind her. Celia dragged Elise toward a side corridor. Maya screamed from the lobby. Lucian entered through the smoke, moving with terrifying precision as he returned fire.
Norah crawled toward her mother. A hand seized her ankle.
Ethan pulled her behind a pillar. “Listen to me. Celia is going to kill Elise and blame Lucian.”
“Where is Jonah?”
“Alive. Maya found him.”
“Why help me?”
Ethan’s face twisted. “Because I finally learned what it feels like to be used by someone who calls it love.”
He pressed a drive into her palm.
“Your father’s complete recording is on that. It proves who ordered the first attack.”
Before Norah could ask, Ethan pushed her toward Lucian and ran into the corridor after Celia.
The drive contained one file.
May you like
When Norah opened it, her father’s voice said a name she had never expected.
“The order came from Lucian Moretti.”
