My heart splits in two. One half absorbs everything of Erin, the other is reaching out to her daughter who is utterly broken. Terrified tears stream down her cheeks. What a fucking unpleasant way to learn the truth about your father.
“I don’t understand,” Erin whispers. “This isn’t you. This isn’t the Gerard I married.”
Gerard tips his head lightly. He looks like he’s really enjoying himself, making my fists sizzle. “Oh? Why don’t you tell me about the Gerard you married?”
Erin swallows loudly. “He was absent, but he wasn’tthis. You’ve always been obsessed with your work. That’s why you weren’t around. I don’t understand what this is.”
There’s a long pause that Gerard eats up with a smile.
“Risk management,” I recall, out loud, the cogs in my brain whirring. “Export compliance. Transit consultation.”
Gerard’s eyes widen as though I just figured out a particularly hard math problem.
“It’s all code for professional arms dealer.”
He laughs lightly. “Well done, Augusto. You just figured out in two minutes what my wife couldn’t in twenty years.”
Erin’s weight in my arms deepens, as though her knees just gave out.
“Although, to be fair,” he continues, “I wasn’t always a professional arms dealer. It was only after years of understanding the system, learning how to move sensitive materials legally—and then, quietly—that I discovered I could use the system for my own benefit. And so, I do.”
“B-but… the charities, the galas…” Erin chokes out.
He turns his gaze to his wife. “All designed to deflect, darling. And didn’t it work well? The charismatic Applebaums—hardworking, successful Gerard, and compliant, dazzling Erin… No one ever suspected, did they?”
“You— You used me?”
“No darling. I just allowed you to play the role you were born for. You didn’t need to know why. But look…” he flicks a hand back and forth between Erin and me, “here you are again, playing another role. I thought perhaps the divorce might help you grow a backbone, that you’d maybe become your own person, but no. You’ve just fallen straight into the hands of another man who’s using you.”
I can’t contain the growl in my throat. “I amnotusing her.”
“You’re paying her to be here, right? Of course you’re using her. I’ve seen the footage, the outfits she’s been wearing—none of them hers. You paid for that closet. You’ve molded her into the person you needed for this retreat.”
I feel Paige’s eyes widen, the discovery that her mom is earning money not by waitressing but by escorting me dawning on her like a dark fog.
“Now,” Gerard says, his voice low. “Are you going to make that call?”
He reaches around his back and when his arm returns to view, he’s holding a gun. Erin gasps, the fraught air scratching at her throat.
Then he aims it at his daughter.
Hisdaughter.
“No! Gerard… What are you doing?” Erin cries, wrestling against me.
“You would hurt her?” I ask, disbelief bleeding into horror. “You would hurtyour own daughter?”
He tilts his head. “I would motivate Augusto to make the correct decision.”
I assess him deeply and quickly, as I would assess an opponent in the ward before laying them on the ground.
When I’d planned to break into this room, I’d been expecting monsters.
Arms dealers—especially Russians—tend to announce themselves in the way they carry their weight—loudly, obviously, and designed to intimidate. Men who choose brutality over authority every time.
Gerard isn’t any of those things.
A place name flashes through my memory.Ontario. The Russians weren’t talking about Ontario in Wayne County—they were talking about Ontario, San Bernadino. This whole thing has been orchestrated from California.
