He looked at my face, and whatever he saw there made him back away.
"Cartier," I said, not looking away from Arthur. "Get our shit. We're leaving."
I carried Chloe to the car. She didn't wake up when I strapped her into the back seat. I slid into the driver's side. Cartier came out about twenty minutes later, a duffel over his shoulder. Nothing else. Just the guns.
"Boss," he said. "I'll follow you."
Halfway down the long, moss-draped driveway, headlights flashed. I could see Mary. I pulled over. Mary hurried to my car and walked to my window. She looked at Chloe in the back seat, then back at me.
"Thank you," she said.
"For what?"
"For getting her out. I've been trying for fourteen years." She reached past me, brushing Chloe's hair back from her face. “My baby,” she whispered. "Listen to what she tells you about them. It's all true. Every word. Tell her to call me if she needs me."
She stepped back, got in her car, and drove away. I sat there for a moment, watching her taillights disappear. Then I put the car in drive and headed for the highway.
Behind me, Chloe slept. Ahead of me, everything was about to change.
Chapter 21: Killian
We made it three hours away from the Landrys’ place before a tropical storm stopped us. My goal had been to make it to Tallahassee; I had a lawyer friend there. Now I was in a hotel that cost too much, watching the rain streak against the glass.
Chloe was in the bedroom, buried under a mountain of white linen. She’d woken up briefly during the drive—just long enough to see the highway signs and the dark, open road. She’d looked at me and asked, “Am I safe?” Her voice was so small it broke my heart. When I nodded, she’d simply exhaled and drifted back into a deep, heavy sleep.
It had been eight hours. I guess her body was finally taking the rest her mind had been denied for years.
"Boss."
Cartier called from the other room. I found him sitting at the small table, a spread of folders and a tablet in front of him. He looked like he hadn't slept, either, but he was freshly showered with a cup of coffee near him. I’d been waiting for him to come back from handling his own needs.
"Tell me," I said, sitting down, feeling impatient.
"We should have done this shit when they first called you about switching brides. It’s worse than we thought." Cartier’s tone was thick with disgust. "There’s nothing to confirm he killed the mother yet, but now we know he did. The mother’swill was ironclad, though. Chloe is the sole beneficiary of the nearly billion-dollar trust, the food plants, and the real estate her mother inherited. Arthur was just a trustee with a sunset clause. On her twenty-fifth birthday, he becomes obsolete. He’d have to move out of that house and survive on a modest stipend unless she or the courts said otherwise.”
He paused and started listing the other things he’d found out. The companies were about to go bankrupt; they’d mortgaged the house they were living in. The neighbors said they rarely saw Chloe but knew she had lived there all her life and doubted what Arthur said about her—that she’d been smart and happy as a child.
I couldn’t help but think back to what Ava had said in that hallway: “We should’ve killed her like we did her mother.” Her voice had been so casual. So cold. I had to make sure they ended up in prison and away from Chloe.
"I got a nurse at the doctor's office they take her to to talk. They were going to commit her after she signed the papers, Killian," Cartier continued, his chair creaking as he leaned forward. "I found a draft for a transfer to a 'private care facility' in South America, of all places. They’re strict. There’s no visitation. No oversight. With the amount of sedation they had listed in her treatment plan, she wouldn't have lasted six months without overdosing."
The rage that had been simmering in my gut since the attic flash-fried into something dangerous. "They won't get the chance—”
My phone rang, interrupting me mid-sentence. It was my grandfather. I answered.
"Killian," the old man’s voice was thin but loud. "I heard there was… an incident. Arthur called me, sounding like a man who’d tangled with a demon. He mentioned the weddingbeing off, something about a 'breakdown.' He said you took his daughter."
"I did," I replied. He had no idea Arthur had tried to pull a bait-and-switch with Olivia.
"Arthur said she was unwell," Grandpa continued, a hint of worry in his tone. "That she needed to be hospitalized immediately. He seemed... frantic that you took her."
"He should be frantic," I said, my grip tightening on the phone. "I'm coming home, Grandpa. I'm bringing Chloe with me. The situation here... it wasn't what you were told. Arthur is lying to you, and he's been hurting her."
There was a long pause. "Hurting her? In what way?"
"I'm not going to give you the details over a phone line. I need a room ready for her. And I need your lead counsel on standby. We’re going to need a barrage of injunctions, a challenge to Arthur's power of attorney, and a full investigation into Celeste Landry’s death."
I heard my grandfather’s breathing hitch. "Is Chloe safe?" he asked quietly.
