“Mon chou.Please.”
I lift my head.
His face isn’t the careful composure he’s been wearing all night, not the lawyer mask or the protective father routine. He looks like a man who just watched someone walk into a fire and couldn’t stop it.
“We’re going to get him back,” he says.
“How?” The word scrapes out of me like sandpaper. “She has him. She has armed men and money and an operation that’s been running for decades, and we have what? A half-built FBI case and a hard drive that might not even be where I think it is?”
“We have the case. We have my testimony. And if that footage exists, we have the kill shot.”
“And what about Lance?” My voice breaks. “What happens to him when the FBI sees that footage? He’s on it, Papa. Every fight, every person he’s hurt. They could charge him. They could put him in prison for the rest of his life.”
My father takes my hands. His grip is firm, his fingers cold, but steady.
“Listen to me very carefully, because this is important. What Lance has been subjected to is, by legal definition, forced labor and human trafficking under federal law. He was recruited as a teenager through a position of trust. He was coerced throughthreats of violence against himself and the people he loves. He was held in that operation through blackmail and the threat of criminal exposure for acts he was forced to commit.”
“But he killed people.”
“Under duress. There’s a legal distinction between a willing participant and a coerced one, and that distinction is the difference between a defendant and a victim. The footage doesn’t incriminate Lance. It exonerates him. It proves the operation existed, it proves the coercion, and it proves he was a victim of a system designed to trap him.”
“You’re sure?”
“Genevieve, I’ve spent my entire career defending people in situations like this. Some of them deserved it. Some of them didn’t. Lance didn’t. And I will use every tool I have to make sure the law sees him the way you and I do.”
A sob works its way up my throat, and I press my fist against my mouth to hold it in.
“I won’t leave him unprotected,” my father says. “The moment you get that footage to me, I’ll have it in the hands of the federal prosecutors building this case, and I will personally ensure that Lance Calloway is classified as a cooperating victim, not a coconspirator. I’ve walked this line before. I know how to do it.”
“What if it’s not enough?”
“It will be enough.” His voice doesn’t waver.
“What if I can’t find it?”
That panic funnels in, dimming my vision.
“You will,” he says. “Between my testimony, the financial records the FBI already has, and physical evidence of the operation, we’ll have a RICO case no prosecutor in this countrywould walk away from. The people who did this to him will go down. And Lance will walk out.”
I search his face for doubt. But there’s nothing. Just the same steady certainty he had when he told me the moon would never come, and it did, and he was already working to fix it.
“I have to go back to Rosebrook,” I say.
“Yes. I know.”
“The footage is in Art’s office. A black hard drive withbackupon it. I held it in my hands weeks ago and didn’t know what it was. At least, I have to hope that’s what it is.”
“And you know how to get to it?”
“I know that building better than anyone.” I swallow. “I worked there for months. I know every back room, every blind spot, every exit. I know when it’s empty and I know when it’s not.”
My father studies me. The same careful assessment he gave Lance when we first walked in, only now it’s pointed at me, and I can see him fighting two instincts: the lawyer who knows this is the right play and the father who wants to lock me in this brownstone and never let me leave.
“You’ll need help,” he says.
“Lance has family in Rosebrook. People who didn’t know what was happening but who will move when they find out.”
“The Calloways.”
