Chapter 12 - THE PRICE OF OPENING THE DOOR
Arthur did not reach for a weapon.
That surprised Reed.
Gabriel noticed.
Clara did too.
Years earlier, Arthur would have.
Maybe Reed expected the older man.
Maybe everyone did.
June stood still.
Her eyes were on her father.
Gabriel’s control was thinner.
“Let her go.”
Reed smiled.
“You disappeared for eighteen years and still think you can make requests.”
“You want Arthur.”
“Yes.”
“Then you have him.”
Arthur looked at Gabriel.
“No.”
Gabriel turned.
Arthur’s voice remained calm.
“You don’t trade your daughter because you feel guilty for leaving her.”
Gabriel’s face hardened.
“This from you?”
“Yes.”
Arthur looked toward Clara.
“I have experience.”
The brothers held each other’s eyes.
Clara saw something pass between them.
Not forgiveness.
Recognition.
Reed pressed the blade closer to June’s skin.
“Touching.”
Arthur looked at him.
“Who is the Keeper?”
Reed smiled.
“You’ll meet him.”
“Where?”
“Mercy House.”
“When?”
“Now.”
Arthur glanced at the six keys.
“You have what you need.”
“Not yet.”
“I’m the seventh.”
“Yes.”
“Then release them.”
“No.”
Arthur almost smiled.
“You’re afraid.”
Reed’s expression changed.
“Of what?”
“That I won’t open it.”
“You will.”
“Why?”
Reed looked toward Clara.
Arthur’s face became stone.
There it was.
Again.
Clara.
Reed said:
“Because the Keeper understands you better than Gabriel does.”
Arthur looked at his daughter.
She did not look afraid.
That scared him more.
Reed continued.
“You will choose the room if the alternative is watching Clara disappear.”
Clara spoke.
“My father isn’t choosing anything for me.”
Reed laughed.
“You think this is about your choice?”
“Yes.”
Her certainty confused him.
Clara stepped forward.
Arthur whispered, “Clara.”
She ignored him.
“Your mistake is thinking everyone in this family still accepts the rules that made you powerful.”
Reed watched her.
“What rule?”
“That fear belongs to whoever creates it.”
Clara’s voice stayed steady.
“You threaten me because you think Dad will obey.”
She looked at Arthur.
“He won’t.”
Arthur felt the statement as command and trust.
Different from obedience.
Reed smiled.
“We’ll see.”
A gunshot came from behind the curtain.
Not at Reed.
Into the ceiling.
Reed flinched.
June moved instantly.
She drove her heel backward into his knee.
Gabriel lunged.
Arthur crossed the distance.
The knife fell.
Reed hit the floor beneath Gabriel.
Two of Arthur’s men entered from the side doors.
Clara looked at her father.
“You said two outside.”
Arthur almost smiled.
“I lied about where.”
She stared.
“Growth is uneven.”
Despite herself, Clara laughed once.
Reed was pinned.
Arthur crouched beside him.
The old urge returned.
Break him.
Force the name.
Use fear because fear had always been efficient.
Clara watched.
Arthur stood again.
“Take him to Mercy House.”
Reed looked surprised.
“You’re opening it?”
Arthur looked at him.
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Because I want your Keeper to believe I am.”
Gabriel stared.
Arthur continued.
“For once, we set the table.”
Clara understood.
Revenge did not need to be immediate.
The Keeper had manipulated people through expectation.
Arthur would manipulate expectation back.
They traveled separately.
Mercy House waited in darkness.
The six keys opened one lock after another.
Vance.
Sorrento.
Sterling.
Carrow.
Shaw.
The sixth belonged to a family Arthur barely remembered: Holloway.
Click.
Six.
The steel door shifted.
Behind it was not the inner room yet.
A narrow corridor led to another wooden door.
No handle on their side.
Arthur stood before it.
Gabriel beside him.
Clara behind.
June.
Sienna had arrived with Julian after Arthur sent word.
Marcus came too.
His face looked twenty years older.
No Elizabeth.
Not yet.
Reed remained restrained in another room.
Arthur knocked.
Nothing.
Then a voice came through the door.
Male.
Old.
“You finally came.”
Arthur froze.
He knew the voice.
Marcus did too.
Gabriel’s face changed.
Clara looked between them.
“Who?”
Arthur whispered a name he had not spoken in almost twenty-five years.
“Father.”
Thomas Vance had supposedly died when Arthur was forty.
Arthur had watched the coffin.
Unlike many others, he had seen a body.
Or believed he had.
The voice behind the door laughed softly.
“Open your eyes, Arthur.”
Gabriel whispered:
“No.”
Arthur looked at him.
“You knew?”
“No.”
Gabriel’s face had gone pale.
“I swear.”
The wooden door opened inward.
A man stood in the shadows.
Not Thomas.
Older than Arthur.
Thin.
Same voice.
Because he had spent decades imitating it.
Marcus whispered:
“Silas Crowe.”
Arthur remembered him.
His father’s voice coach.
Confidant.
Messenger.
A man who had sat near Thomas for years because an illness had damaged Thomas’s throat.
Silas often spoke for him in meetings.
After Thomas died, Silas vanished.
Arthur had forgotten him.
That was the pattern.
The invisible man.
The Keeper smiled.
“You always looked at the throne.”
May you like
His eyes moved to Gabriel.
“Neither of you ever looked behind it.”
