I didn't take the bet. My Addie would probably do it in half the time. "Keep back," I said to Magnus as he slipped into the driver's seat. "No need to follow close with the tracker in her phone."
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
ADDIE
Ilost the detail in ten minutes flat.
The two men Vidar had assigned were competent. They just weren't expecting a woman in a city she'd lived in for half a decade to know exactly which block had a delivery entrance that opened onto a completely different street. I walked four blocks east, took the subway two stops, and came up blinking into the grey afternoon air of the East side feeling like myself for the first time in a week.
The park was a private square; the kind that exists in certain Manhattan neighborhoods as a reward for paying a particular level of rent. Locked iron gate, keypad entry, a key code Elias had texted to the server in a code only he and I understood.
Inside the park were bare trees, empty benches, the hush of a space that was technically outdoors but felt sealed off from the city's noise. At this hour on a weekday morning, it was empty.
I pushed through the gate.
Nell saw me first. She was in a camel coat; her locs pinned up and curling around her long neck. She looked at me the way she always looked at me when she was trying to assess damage — thoroughly and without softening it.
Elias stood up beside her. He looked thinner than the last time I'd seen him in person. There was a yellowing bruise along his jaw that he hadn't mentioned on the phone. Fucking Gunnar. I'd knee him in the balls the next time I saw him.
I crossed the path and pulled my brother into a hug before he could say anything. Elias hugged me back hard. He smelled like the Blackwood estate — cedar, wood smoke, the floral laundry detergent I'd smelled on my sheets that first night there. He smelled like he'd been living there long enough for it to get into his clothes.
I turned to Nell. She opened her arms, and I stepped into them. When her strong arms encircled me, the iron park fence and the bare trees and the whole complicated weight of the last week compressed into the familiar scent of her perfume and the firm, no-nonsense quality of her embrace.
Her eyes dropped to my throat. The mark was covered. I'd worn a silk scarf, high and deliberately knotted, but it was still visible. That was the point of its placement.
"What the fuck, Addie?"
"It's not what you think."
"Says every abused woman on the planet."
"Sit down," I said. "We need to talk fast."
"We can talk after we get you out of here."
"I'm not leaving him," I said.
Nell looked at me. "Addie."
"I didn't know about Alaska. I'm angry about it. I'm not defending it."
"You can be angry and leave still, Addie. They're not mutually exclusive."
"I don't want to leave."
Elias looked down at his hands. His shoulders sagged as if he was facing our father to tell him he'd lost something, or broken something, or had simply breathed wrong.
"I have watched you for three years," Nell said. "I have watched you navigate some of the most aggressive, manipulative men in corporate New York without losing an inch of yourself. And right now you are sitting here telling me you don't want to leave a man who took your freedom and your career and is currently trying to take me away. And you're touching your bruised throat while you say it."
"The mark is something I chose."
Nell sat back. The professional mask stayed on, but something shifted behind her eyes — a recalibration. "We'll deal with your Stockholm syndrome later. The Blackwoods are into things that will bring federal heat."
"Which is why I'm not planning to blow things up," I said. "I'm planning to use what you found. Bring the list to Vidar. Let him fix it before it becomes a problem. In exchange?—"
"In exchange for what?" Elias asked. "You wanted out of this life, Addie. This is your chance. For good. I'm the heir. There is no out for me. But I can go forward on my terms."
"Or we take this to the police," Nell interjected. "I don't know what kind of crazy families you two came from, but I, for one, am not cool with having my agency taken away. Your husband has been having me followed, and the hell am I going to put up with that."
