Chapter 3
Three Bennett convoys had been intercepted in two months.
Not destroyed.
Touched.
Tested.
One driver followed.
One warehouse photographed.
One route blocked for exactly seven minutes.
Someone was studying us.
I had told only my inner circle.
Ryan knew.
I closed the bedroom door behind me.
Not locked.
Never locked again.
“Who told you about the shipments?”
Ryan shrugged.
“People talk.”
“Which people?”
“Maybe your organization isn’t as loyal as you think.”
Linda smiled.
“There. That pride.”
I looked at her.
She adjusted one pearl earring as though her son had not just been thrown through a clock.
“James has always believed fear equals loyalty.”
“No.”
I stepped closer.
“Fear is what you used on Emily.”
Linda laughed.
“She needed correction.”
Emily’s face tightened.
Linda pointed at her.
“Look at her. Seven months pregnant and still acting like a frightened teenager.”
I said:
“She is bruised.”
“She bruises easily.”
“She was locked away.”
“She wouldn’t stop calling you.”
That mattered.
I looked at Emily.
“They took your phone because you tried to reach me?”
She nodded.
Ryan scoffed.
“She called you over everything.”
“What is everything?”
Emily whispered:
“When he hit me.”
Silence.
Ryan’s expression hardened.
“She shoved me first.”
Emily stared at him.
“I tried to leave the room.”
“You pushed past me.”
He looked at me.
“See? She always leaves out what she does.”
Victim blamed.
Automatically.
Linda nodded.
“If Emily knew how to obey her husband, none of this would have happened.”
I felt my jaw tighten.
My daughter looked down.
Too familiar with that sentence.
I picked up her phone.
Forty-two missed outgoing attempts to my private number.
None completed.
Blocked through the apartment router.
Someone had deliberately prevented them.
Then I saw another app.
A hidden network monitor.
Installed three weeks ago.
It listed Bennett frequencies.
My family channels.
My convoy beacon.
I looked at Ryan.
“You copied my communications.”
“No.”
Linda interrupted:
“He didn’t.”
I turned.
Too quick.
Then Emily whispered:
“His mother did.”
Linda’s face changed.
Emily looked at me.
“I saw her using your signet code.”
I stared at Linda’s rings.
One was not hers.
May you like
A crude replica of mine.
And the abuse had just expanded from Ryan’s hands to an attack against the entire Bennett organization.
