Chapter 6
I heard Daniel outside.
“Ethan!”
Gunfire answered him.
I flinched.
Marcus leaned around the pillar and fired twice.
One of the men shouted.
Claire grabbed my arm.
“We need to leave.”
“No argument.”
I looked behind us.
A loading door.
Twenty yards away.
No cover between us.
Marcus saw me looking.
“When I fire, run.”
“You’re coming.”
He laughed once.
“That concern touching.”
“It wasn’t concern.”
“Good.”
He leaned out and fired.
“Go!”
Claire and I ran.
Bullets cracked against the concrete floor.
I grabbed her hand.
We reached the loading door.
Locked.
“Move.”
Marcus fired again while running toward us.
He kicked the door near the latch.
Nothing.
I joined him.
Together we hit it.
The rusty frame broke.
We stumbled into sunlight.
Daniel’s SUV was sideways across the alley.
Its windshield was cracked.
Daniel crouched behind the engine block with a pistol.
“Get down!”
We dropped.
A shot hit the wall beside us.
Daniel returned fire.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
The men inside the warehouse retreated.
Marcus cursed.
“They’ll disappear before police arrive.”
“Let them,” Daniel said.
Marcus turned.
The two men stared at each other.
For a second, I forgot about the bullets.
Daniel’s expression was pure hatred.
“Marcus.”
“Danny.”
“Don’t call me that.”
Claire whispered, “They know each other.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Apparently everyone does.”
Daniel raised the gun slightly.
“Hands where I can see them.”
Marcus smiled.
“You always were loyal.”
“To Margaret.”
“That’s what you told yourself.”
Daniel’s face tightened.
“Put the gun down.”
Marcus slowly set his pistol on the pavement.
Daniel kicked it away.
Police cars entered the alley.
Everything became noise.
Commands.
Weapons.
Hands in the air.
Marcus was forced to the ground.
So was I until Daniel explained.
Claire was crying.
I held her.
I wanted to be angry with her.
I was.
But when I realized how close I’d come to losing her, anger could wait.
Police detained Marcus.
Then they questioned all of us separately.
Dad arrived forty minutes later.
Angela was with him.
The moment Dad saw me, he walked straight over and hugged me.
I froze.
Dad and I weren’t a hugging family.
Not anymore.
But he held me so tightly I felt his hands shaking.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
He pulled back.
Then looked at Claire.
“You?”
“I’m okay.”
Angela approached more slowly.
Her eyes went to Marcus sitting in the back of a police car.
He looked at her.
She stopped walking.
Dad noticed.
So did I.
Marcus gave Angela the smallest nod.
She looked away.
Dad’s face hardened.
“What was that?”
Angela said nothing.
I stepped between them.
“She knows him.”
Dad looked at me.
“What?”
“She knows Marcus.”
Angela whispered, “Ethan.”
“How long?”
Dad turned to her.
“Angela?”
She closed her eyes.
“Two years.”
Dad looked like he’d been punched.
“You’ve been meeting him?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She started crying.
I had almost never seen my sister cry.
Not even at Mom’s funeral.
She had stood beside me like stone.
Now tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Because he’s my father.”
Dad didn’t move.
Daniel looked down.
Claire gripped my hand.
Dad finally whispered, “Who told you?”
“Mom.”
His face changed.
“What?”
Angela took out her phone.
“She left me a letter.”
Dad stared.
“She wrote it before she died.”
“When did you get it?”
“Two years ago.”
“How?”
“Her attorney.”
Dad looked at Daniel.
Daniel shook his head.
“I didn’t know.”
Angela continued.
“Mom instructed the attorney to wait until I turned thirty-eight.”
“Why thirty-eight?”
“She said that was the age she was when she finally understood the cost of lying.”
Dad turned away.
My heart broke watching him.
I asked Angela, “Did she leave me one?”
Angela looked at me.
“Yes.”
My chest tightened.
“Where is it?”
She hesitated.
Dad turned sharply.
“You have Ethan’s letter?”
Angela whispered, “Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because Mom asked me to decide whether he was ready.”
I laughed in disbelief.
“You decided for me too?”
“Ethan—”
“Everyone keeps deciding what truth I can handle!”
“I was protecting you.”
“There it is again.”
Angela wiped her face.
“I saw what finding out did to me.”
“So you hid my letter?”
“I wasn’t going to hide it forever.”
“How long?”
She didn’t answer.
I stepped closer.
“How long were you planning to keep it?”
“I don’t know.”
“That means forever.”
“No.”
“Where is it?”
“At my house.”
“Give it to me.”
“I will.”
“Today.”
She nodded.
“Today.”
Dad was still staring at the ground.
I looked at him.
“Did you know?”
He raised his eyes.
“About the letters? No.”
“About Angela being Marcus’s daughter?”
“Yes.”
Angela looked at him.
“You knew?”
Dad nodded.
“All your life.”
Her face twisted.
“And you never treated me differently?”
His expression hardened.
“You were my daughter.”
“You’re not my biological father.”
“I don’t give a damn.”
She started crying harder.
Dad stepped toward her.
“For thirty-eight years, I was there.”
Angela covered her mouth.
“I changed your diapers. I took you to kindergarten. I sat outside your room when you had nightmares. I taught you to drive. I walked you down the aisle.”
Her marriage had lasted three years.
The divorce nearly destroyed her.
Dad had moved into her guest room for a month afterward because she couldn’t sleep alone.
His voice broke.
“I buried your mother with you holding one of my hands and Ethan holding the other.”
Angela sobbed.
“I know.”
“Then don’t stand there and tell me who your father is because of a laboratory result.”
Marcus watched through the police car window.
Dad noticed.
Their eyes met.
Decades of anger passed between them without a word.
Then Dad turned back to Angela.
“Did you take the money?”
Silence.
Angela’s tears stopped.
I felt Claire stiffen beside me.
Dad repeated.
“Did you move company money?”
Angela looked at me.
Then at Daniel.
Finally at Dad.
“Yes.”
Dad closed his eyes.
“How much?”
“Not two million.”
“How much?”
“Six hundred thousand.”
Daniel inhaled sharply.
Dad whispered, “Why?”
“To find out where it went.”
“What?”
Angela wiped her face.
“When Marcus contacted me, he claimed part of Harrison Jewelers had been built using money belonging to him and Mom.”
Dad’s jaw tightened.
“He told you that.”
“I didn’t believe him.”
“So you stole?”
“I traced.”
“With six hundred thousand dollars?”
“I created transfers through the same shell vendors I discovered in old archived records.”
Daniel frowned.
“Old records from when?”
“Thirty years ago.”
Dad became very still.
Angela continued.
“The money moved through three corporations.”
She looked at Marcus.
“One belonged to him.”
Then at Dad.
“One belonged to Mom.”
“And the third?” I asked.
Angela looked sick.
“That’s what I was trying to identify.”
Dad said nothing.
I stared at him.
“You know.”
He didn’t answer.
“Dad.”
He finally whispered, “Yes.”
“Whose company was it?”
Dad looked toward the police car.
“Daniel’s.”
I turned.
Daniel’s face went pale.
Angela stared at him.
“What?”
Daniel shook his head.
“Richard.”
Dad continued.
“Daniel was Marcus’s partner.”
I stepped away from him.
“No.”
Daniel looked at me.
“It wasn’t what you think.”
I laughed.
“I have heard that sentence fifty times today.”
“Ethan.”
“You told me Marcus was dangerous.”
“He was.”
“And you weren’t?”
Daniel’s jaw tightened.
“I made mistakes.”
Marcus laughed from inside the police car.
Even through the closed window, we heard it.
Daniel looked toward him with pure hatred.
Dad said quietly, “The three of them moved money together.”
“Mom too?”
Dad nodded.
“Before I met her.”
My childhood hero.
My dead mother.
The woman whose photograph sat beside my bed for a year after she died.
She had been involved too.
I felt numb.
Angela asked, “Then Harrison Jewelers really was built using their money?”
Dad looked at her.
“Partly.”
“How much?”
“A hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
Angela blinked.
“That’s it?”
“In 1992.”
I did the math mentally.
Still nowhere near enough to explain the empire Harrison Jewelers became.
Dad understood.
“I repaid it.”
Marcus shouted from the police car.
“You paid Margaret!”
Dad looked at him.
“Yes.”
“You never paid me!”
“Because the money was stolen!”
Marcus slammed his hands against the glass.
“It was mine!”
Dad stepped closer to the car.
“It belonged to people you were laundering for!”
Police officers moved between them.
Marcus shouted, “You stole my family!”
Dad exploded.
“You abandoned them!”
Everything stopped.
Dad’s voice shook.
“You want to hate me for the company? Fine.”
He pointed at Marcus.
“But do not pretend I took your children.”
Marcus stared at him.
Dad continued.
“You had chance after chance to become a father.”
Marcus’s face hardened.
“You kept me away.”
“I kept you away when you showed up drunk. I kept you away when men followed you to my house. I kept you away when you threatened Margaret.”
“I never hurt her.”
“You terrified her.”
Marcus went silent.
Dad’s breathing was heavy.
Then an officer approached.
“Mr. Harrison?”
Dad turned.
“We need everyone to come downtown.”
Before we could move, Angela’s phone rang.
She looked at the screen.
Unknown number.
She answered.
“Hello?”
Her face changed.
“No.”
I stepped closer.
“What?”
Angela put the call on speaker.
A distorted voice filled the air.
“You found the old accounts.”
Nobody spoke.
The voice continued.
“That was a mistake.”
Angela’s hand shook.
“Who is this?”
“You have something that belongs to us.”
“What?”
“The ledger.”
Daniel’s face changed immediately.
Marcus stood inside the police car.
Even from twenty feet away, I saw panic in his eyes.
Angela frowned.
“What ledger?”
The caller laughed.
Then said, “Ask your father.”
Both Angela and I looked at Marcus.
The voice continued.
May you like
“The real one.”
The call ended.
