Chapter 5 - The Enemy Inside My Home
The confrontation ended without a shot.
Not because Daniel Pike developed a conscience.
Because the police arrived.
Sarah had quietly informed a federal contact about our destination before we left Chicago. She later told me that trusting law enforcement was less dangerous than trusting every armed man carrying my family’s name.
Daniel and six others were arrested outside the church.
Three vehicles escaped.
Elias Crowe was not among them.
Daniel refused to answer questions, but his face changed when the police showed him Karen’s phone. The message threatening the Blackwell bloodline had been routed through a private network connected to one of Daniel’s shell companies.
He had compromised my estate for years.
Every security upgrade.
Every travel schedule.
Every location Lily visited.
I had handed the enemy a key and paid him to guard the door.
We returned to Chicago under federal protection. I hated every second of it, but Grace’s warning followed me.
Do not become your father.
For the first time in my adult life, I allowed someone else to establish the rules of my security.
Grace stayed at the estate.
The first nights were difficult.
Lily wanted to love her immediately but did not know how. She asked questions at breakfast that adults would have avoided.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“Did you have birthdays without us?”
“Did you like Emma better?”
Each question wounded Grace, but she answered honestly.
“I tried to call.”
“I thought about you every birthday.”
“And I loved you both every day, even when I could only hold one of you.”
Emma’s questions were different.
“Will I still be allowed to call Anna my mommy?”
“Yes,” Grace answered.
“Will Daddy be mad?”
“No,” I said.
“Will I have to change my name?”
“Only if you decide you want to.”
Emma looked relieved.
The girls began sleeping in the same room. We added a second bed, but they often ended up together under one blanket, Mr. Buttons wedged between them.
Grace and I remained strangers who remembered being married.
She occupied the guest suite.
I stayed in my room.
Sometimes we met in the hallway after midnight, both checking that the girls were still there.
On the fifth night, I found Grace sitting outside their door.
“You can go inside,” I said.
“I don’t want to wake them.”
“You used to say children slept through everything.”
“Ours don’t.”
She was right.
Lily had learned to recognize danger from the way my guards moved. Emma woke whenever footsteps passed too close to her door.
I sat beside Grace.
The silence between us held seven years of questions.
“Did you love Anna?” I asked.
Grace understood what I meant.
“As family,” she said. “She gave Emma a childhood when I could only give her distance.”
“Were you ever free?”
“Not completely.”
“Did Elias hold you somewhere?”
“Sometimes. Other times he let me live alone because fear was a stronger lock.”
I looked toward the girls’ bedroom.
“I should have known.”
“How?”
“I should have questioned the closed coffin. The rushed funeral. Victor’s decisions.”
“You had a newborn daughter and a war inside your family.”
“That doesn’t excuse it.”
“No.”
Her refusal to comfort me was strangely honest.
“I became harder after you died,” I said.
“I heard.”
“I told myself it was necessary.”
“Was it?”
“Sometimes.”
“And the other times?”
I thought of men punished because fear protected my name. Businesses taken because I could take them. Loyalty demanded instead of earned.
“The other times, it was easier.”
Grace nodded.
“That is what frightened me.”
“You thought I became him.”
“I thought losing me might turn you into him.”
“Did it?”
She looked at me for a long moment.
“No. But you came close.”
Her answer hurt because it was true.
A knock sounded downstairs.
Sarah entered the house carrying several files.
“We found Elias,” she said.
“Where?”
“He owns a private medical center outside Rockford under another name.”
Grace went pale.
“He took me there after the birth.”
Sarah opened the first file.
“The center received payments from Blackwell accounts for seven years.”
I looked at Victor, who stood near the fireplace.
“Which accounts?”
He examined the records.
“These belonged to your father.”
“He has been dead five years,” Sarah said. “Yet payments continued.”
“Who authorized them?”
She placed a signature page on the table.
Adrian Blackwell.
My brother entered the room at that exact moment.
He stopped when he saw the document.
I crossed the room and threw it at him.
“You funded Elias.”
Adrian looked down at the signature.
“I funded the facility.”
“That is not a distinction.”
“It housed women and children your father had placed in danger. When he died, I kept the payments going because cutting them off would have exposed everyone.”
“Did you know Elias controlled it?”
“At first, no.”
“And later?”
Adrian’s silence answered.
Grace stood.
“You told me Elias couldn’t find the church.”
“I thought the facility’s records could lead me to him before he reached us.”
“You used us as bait,” I said.
“I was trying to end it.”
“You decided the risk for my daughters.”
“Our daughters are family,” Adrian snapped. “I have spent seven years trying to clean up what Father did while you sat on his throne and pretended the crown was different because you wore it better.”
The room went still.
I moved toward him.
Grace stepped between us.
“No more secrets disguised as protection.”
She looked at Adrian.
“You should have told Marcus.”
Then she turned to me.
“And you should listen before deciding punishment.”
Adrian took a breath.
“Elias has records on every crime your father ordered. Judges, officers, executives, doctors. Enough to destroy half the network that kept him powerful.”
“Why keep them?”
“Insurance.”
“Where?”
“At the medical center.”
Sarah closed the file.
“The federal authorities want those records.”
“They also want Elias,” I said.
“And they believe he is preparing to leave the country.”
Grace looked toward the staircase.
“Then let him leave.”
Everyone stared at her.
“He has spent seven years using fear to control us,” she said. “You are talking about chasing him into another trap.”
“He will never stop,” I replied.
“Then stop him legally.”
“You think prison can hold a man like Elias?”
“No. I think evidence can destroy what gives him power.”
Sarah nodded.
“If we obtain the records lawfully and connect Daniel, Karen, the hospital, and the forged identities, Elias loses his protection.”
Adrian reached into his coat.
Victor drew his weapon.
“Easy,” Adrian said.
He placed a key card on the table.
“This accesses the records room.”
I picked it up.
“How did you get it?”
“I visited the center yesterday.”
“You knew Grace was going there?”
“No.”
Adrian looked at her.
“But Elias expected her.”
Grace’s face changed.
“What does that mean?”
“He has someone else.”
My phone rang.
Rosa’s number.
I answered.
No one spoke.
Then a child’s frightened voice whispered through the line.
“Daddy?”
Lily.
I looked toward the staircase.
The girls’ bedroom door stood open.
Grace ran.
We reached the room together.
Empty beds.
Open window.
Mr. Buttons lay on the floor.
A voice came through my phone.
Elias Crowe sounded exactly as I remembered—calm, patient, almost kind.
“Bring the key card to the medical center, Marcus.”
“Let me speak to both girls.”
“You heard Lily.”
“Emma.”
A pause.
Then Emma began crying in the background.
Grace grabbed the phone.
“Elias, they are children.”
“They are leverage.”
“You told me Marcus was the monster.”
“I told you what kept you obedient.”
Grace closed her eyes.
“I will come.”
“No,” I said.
Elias heard me.
“Both of you will come. Adrian too.”
“And Victor?” I asked.
Elias laughed softly.
“Victor has already given me everything I need.”
I looked around.
Victor was gone.
On the table where he had been standing lay his glasses and Grace’s silver locket.
The front gates opened on the security monitor.
A black sedan disappeared into the night.
Victor had betrayed us.
May you like
Or he wanted Elias to believe he had.
Either way, my daughters were inside that car.
