29
IRIS
The mahogany doors of the VIP Study swing open.
I stand in the center of the Persian rug, my boots planted on the floor. My heart beats against the wire taped flat to the center of my chest.
Judge William Hale steps into the room.
He’s wearing a charcoal overcoat over a perfectly tailored navy suit. His silver hair is immaculate. He carries himself with the unassailable authority of a federal courtroom.
But tonight, looking at him through the lens of the Black Ledger, the illusion dissolves. I don’t see a father. I see a sociopath wearing a very expensive mask.
He isn’t alone.
He’s flanked by two men in cheap, dark suits. They have the thick necks, broad shoulders, and restless, scanning eyes of off-duty police officers. They look like the cleaners Cassian warned me about—corrupt badges on my father’s payroll who know how to make a crime scene disappear.
My father stops ten feet away from me.
I wait for it. A part of me, the pathetic, bruised child that still lives somewhere deep in my ribcage, expects him to rushforward. I expect him to pull me into his arms, to look at my oversized T-shirt, the cargo pants, and the fading bruises on my neck, and ask me if I’m okay. I expect at least a flicker of relief that his only child is alive.
He doesn’t rush forward. He doesn’t soften.
His cold blue eyes sweep over me, taking in my boots and the rigid set of my jaw. His expression flattens into a look of mild, exhausted irritation. He looks at me the exact same way he looked at a wilted flower on an expensive arrangement.
I’m not a daughter who survived a kidnapping. I’m a political liability.
“Where is the drive, Iris?” he asks without a hint of affection or joy at our reunion.
He just wants his property.
“Daddy?” I whisper, letting my voice shake. “Is that what you’re going to ask first?”
“Where is it, Iris?”
I wrap my arms around my waist, shrinking my posture back. “I hid it,” I lie, letting a terrified breath escape my lips. “Daddy, the Russians... they said you paid them. They said you told them to burn the estate with me inside. Why would they say that?”
He sighs. “I don’t have time for your theatrics tonight. The Mayor is expecting me at a fundraiser breakfast in seven hours, and I have to manage the press fallout of your disappearance. Where did you hide the drive?”
My father exchanges a brief, annoyed glance with the cleaner to his right.
“You were always far too emotional, Iris,” he says, stepping up to the edge of the table, putting the wood between us. “You let your severe anxiety govern your logic. You chose to interfere with my affairs, and you created a catastrophic liability.”
“But I’m your daughter,” I gasp, forcing a wet tear to spill over my lashes. “You sent them to burn the estate with me inside?”
My father stares at me. He doesn’t look panicked. He doesn’t look like a man whose darkest, bloodiest secret has been uncovered. He looks like a tired judge staring down a hostile witness.
“I sent them to save my legacy,” he states, his voice dropping to a cold, flat register. “A legacy I spent forty years meticulously building. You think this world runs on good intentions? It runs on pure power. It runs on control. Elias was going to destroy everything I built with his little digital crusade. The hitman was supposed to simply eliminate the threat in this room, but he became greedy. He took the evidence, and he took you.”
“He took a bullet for me,” I cry softly, still playing the desperate victim. “He protected me.”
My father scoffs, a short, ugly sound. “He was a feral dog on a leash. I saved him from lethal injection five years ago, and he betrayed me. If he forgot his place, that’s his failure. But you...”
He looks at me, his eyes narrowing with cruel, calculating disgust.
“You were always weak,” he says, his words designed to gut me. “You crumble under the slightest amount of pressure. You couldn’t even handle ordering the wine for a summer solstice party without breaking down. You wept for a month over that pathetic college boy, Leo. You thought I didn’t know? I practically packed his bags and bought his ticket out of state myself to prove how fragile your little teenage romances were. Did you really think you had the constitution to survive the fallout of a federal blackmail scandal? I couldn’t risk the FBI finding you. I couldn’t risk you sitting in a brightly lit interrogation room, crying and bargaining for a plea deal. You’re a liability, Iris. You always have been.”
They’re the culmination of every fear I ever had about my worth to him.
