Chapter 3
I brought Ellis in alone.
No Vanessa.
People lie differently when the person they perform loyalty for is not in the room.
He sat across from me, bruised but still arrogant.
“You assaulted me in front of airport staff.”
I almost smiled.
“You dragged my nephew toward a flight under threat.”
“He’s my son.”
“Then act like his father.”
His jaw tightened.
I placed the black card on the table.
“Who told you what this opens?”
He stared at it.
“Everybody knows Mercers hide money.”
“No.”
I leaned back.
“You knew six million.”
That detail mattered.
Sabrina’s emergency reserve was never discussed publicly.
Even most Mercer capos thought the black cards were only safe-house passes.
Ellis had a number.
Numbers come from people.
“Who?”
He smiled.
“Maybe your sister talks.”
Sabrina was behind the privacy glass where he couldn’t see her.
Good.
I let him continue.
“She always did have trouble keeping family matters private.”
There it was.
Blame.
His favorite weapon.
“If Sabrina had simply done what was best for Noah, none of this would have happened.”
“What was best?”
“Stability.”
I laughed once.
“A three-year-old carrying an escape bag because you scare him is stability?”
His eyes hardened.
“He needs discipline.”
“He needs a father who doesn’t threaten his mother through him.”
Ellis leaned forward.
“You know what Sabrina does? She cries. She calls you. She makes every disagreement into a Mercer crisis.”
“Did she call me today?”
Silence.
No.
She hadn’t.
Because he had spent two years convincing her that using my protection proved she was weak.
I understood more now.
“Vanessa told Noah I wouldn’t come.”
Ellis’s face flickered.
I had guessed.
That reaction confirmed it.
“She told him Uncle Adrian was too busy. Didn’t she?”
He looked away.
That line mattered because Noah believed he had to save Sabrina himself.
Three years old.
My hands tightened under the table.
Then Ellis said something he clearly meant as a warning.
“You don’t understand what’s in that reserve.”
I looked at him.
“Apparently neither do you.”
His smile returned.
“I know your father left something about the Chappells.”
There.
Not money.
History.
“What?”
He leaned back.
“Ask the man who sold Sabrina’s card number.”
My expression changed.
Ellis saw it and smiled.
He had finally landed something.
“One of your people, Adrian.”
May you like
He looked toward the black card.
“You should be asking which Mercer decided six million was worth more than your sister.”
