Chapter 4 — The Knife in My Sister’s Hand

“What did they promise you?” I asked.

Lily’s breath touched my ear. “Control of my own money. A passport nobody takes away. A life where I don’t need your permission to leave the country.”

“And putting a knife against my throat gets you that?”

“Thomas said you’d never agree unless we made you. He said you would walk out of here alive.”

I kept my gun pointed at the floor.

“Did he mention the bomb?”

Her grip shifted.

“That wasn’t part of what I agreed to.”

“Damian and Camila were drinking to my death an hour ago. Why would they do that if the plan was to let me live?”

“They told me there had been an accident. They said they were trying to find you.”

“They were choosing which of my companies to take first.”

For a second, the blade moved away from my skin.

Damian noticed.

“Don’t listen to him, Lily. He’s doing what he always does.”

I looked up at the walkway.

“Tell her what you said about her in my study.”

“Matteo,” Camila warned.

“Tell her.”

Damian started down the metal stairs. His smile had disappeared.

“Put your weapon down. We can discuss this without anybody getting hurt.”

Blood ran from the small cut beneath Lily’s knife into my collar.

“You’ve already hurt her.”

“She wanted the injuries to look convincing.”

Behind me, Lily inhaled sharply.

I remembered the man dragging her by the hair. Whatever she had imagined when she agreed to this, it had not looked like that.

“Did she ask you to kill her afterward too?” I asked.

“He’s lying,” Damian said immediately.

I turned my head just enough to see her eyes in the window.

“You don’t have to believe me. Ask him why you’re still surrounded by men with rifles.”

Damian reached the warehouse floor.

“The gun.”

I could have struck Lily’s wrist, turned inside her arm, and used her as cover. My father would have expected it. He had taught me that a family member with a weapon was still an enemy.

I bent slowly and placed the pistol on the concrete.

“You’re not going to make me hurt you,” I told her.

Her fingers loosened against my coat.

A guard entered through the side door and kicked my pistol away. Another searched my pockets, taking my phone, the radio, and the remaining ammunition. When he pressed my burned shoulder, I held still.

Lily lowered the knife.

Damian caught her wrist before she could step away. He took the blade and passed it to the guard.

“Good girl,” he said.

“Don’t call her that.”

He turned toward me.

“You don’t get to decide how I speak anymore.”

Sophia still stood beside the office doorway with her pistol raised. On the walkway, Camila pushed Thomas against the railing.

“Your turn,” she called.

“Release him first,” Sophia said.

Camila pressed the muzzle beneath his jaw.

Thomas looked at his sister.

“Please, Soph. Put it down.”

She crouched and placed the pistol at her feet.

A guard took it. Another caught her elbows and pulled her arms behind her back.

I watched his hands. No cuffs yet. They wanted us frightened and manageable, but they still expected cooperation.

That was worth remembering.

Damian stopped in front of me. We had stood this close at my father’s burial. He had put a hand on my neck and told me he would help me carry whatever came next.

“Fifteen years,” I said.

His jaw moved.

“Fifteen years of keeping your men in line while you took the credit.”

“You could have asked for more.”

“I didn’t want another allowance.”

Lily looked down. The word had landed where he intended it to.

“So you murdered Marco,” I said.

“Marco chose the wrong side.”

“He thought he was on yours.”

Damian hit me in the stomach.

I bent, struggling to breathe. Lily moved toward me, but a guard blocked her.

“Stop,” she said. “You said nobody would hurt him.”

Damian straightened his cuff.

“Then persuade him to cooperate.”

I lifted my head.

“What do you need?”

He smiled again.

“Crown. Your father’s reserve. The companies can wait.”

“You searched the house?”

“Every room.”

“Find anything?”

“Enough to know we need you.”

He gestured toward the far loading bay. A steel cabinet stood beneath a work light, separate from the warehouse equipment. Its doors were open around a terminal and two dark glass scanners.

I recognized the equipment housing.

I kept that recognition off my face.

Camila leaned over the railing.

“Check his watch. He keeps an emergency transmitter in it.”

The guard tore the watch from my wrist.

It was an ordinary watch. The transmitter belonged to an older one I had stopped wearing after Camila complained that it spoiled the line of my cuffs.

I looked up at her.

She remembered too. Her expression changed before she covered it.

For two years, I had told this woman how to keep me alive. She had listened carefully enough to help someone kill me.

“Thomas found the access point,” Damian said. “Lily brought us the family authorization documents. You’ll finish the process.”

I looked at my sister.

“Which documents?”

“The succession folder,” she whispered. “From the safe in Father’s room.”

I had given her that combination myself. She needed access if anything happened to me.

Damian mistook my silence for defeat.

“You see? It didn’t have to be difficult.”

Above us, Thomas shifted against the railing. Camila adjusted her grip on his bound wrists.

Sophia watched him with an expression I did not want to look at for long. She had survived the house, crossed the city, and fired a gun at a man to reach her brother.

He had not said her name again.

“Bring him down,” I told Damian.

“You’re hardly in a position to—”

“If you want me to cooperate, bring him where she can see he’s alive.”

“I can see him,” Sophia said.

Her voice was quiet. She was looking at Thomas’s hands now.

Camila glanced at her.

“You’ll get a family reunion when we’re finished.”

Thomas lifted his head.

“We’re finished with this part.”

Camila frowned.

“What?”

He stepped away from her gun.

She caught his sleeve, but he pulled free. The rope dropped from his wrists and landed across her shoes.

Nobody had cut it.

Sophia took a step forward. The guard holding her tightened his grip.

“Thomas?”

He rolled his shoulders and wiped the blood from his cheek with the back of his hand.

“I’m sorry you had to see that, Soph.”

Camila raised her pistol at him.

“Get back against the railing.”

One of the men beside the upper stairs caught her wrist. He forced her arm down and removed the weapon.

Damian turned.

“What the hell are you doing?”

The guard beside me lifted his rifle.

Not toward Thomas.

Toward Damian.

Around the warehouse, other weapons moved with it.

I counted the men again. Nobody looked confused. Nobody waited for Costa’s orders.

Thomas descended the stairs at an ordinary pace, one hand sliding along the rail.

A black ring gleamed on his finger.

“I told you I needed him alive,” he said to Damian. “You’ve spent the entire night trying to make that difficult.”

Damian stared at the rifle aimed at his chest.

“I brought these men.”

“You introduced us,” Thomas said. “That isn’t quite the same thing.”

Sophia’s face had gone white.

Thomas reached the bottom step and held out his hand.

The guard placed Camila’s pistol in it.