Page 126 of Shatter

Gray eyes, pale and patient.

He smiles at me, and it's the same smile he wore at the engagement party, on the terrace, when he told me he wasn't my father.

My feet won't move.

My hands won't stop shaking.

The smell of him reaches me across the cold little room, cedar and scotch, and bile climbs so fast I have to swallow twice to keep it down.

"Pierce." Desmond looks past me. "Thank you. You've done well."

I turn around.

Pierce is standing in the doorway, his face white and wet, and he won't look at me.

He stares at the floor between his loafers.

"You brought me here." My voice comes out a whisper. "You brought me to him."

"I didn't have a choice." Pierce's voice is wrecked. "Anni, he was going to... Dad was going to..."

"Your father made a choice." Desmond's voice is warm and reasonable, the voice of a man explaining weather. "And your brother made a choice. And now it's your turn, Annika. I think you'll make the right one."

He pulls a phone out of his jacket pocket.

He taps the screen and sets it on the desk between us on speaker.

It rings three times.

"Desmond." My father's voice, rough with sleep and something else. "Is she there?"

My knees nearly buckle.

"She's here, Richard." Desmond smiles at me. "Say hello."

A pause.

The phone crackles.

"Annika." My father clears his throat. "Listen to me. Do exactly what Desmond tells you. Give him what you took. Do you understand?"

"Dad." It comes out of me eight years old, small and cracked. "Dad, he sent a man to cut me. He's going to..."

"He's going to marry you." My father's voice goes hard, the voice he used in the boardroom. "As agreed. The debt is forgiven, and the company survives. You come home where you belong. This is the arrangement, Annika. I signed it. It's done."

I stare at the phone.

At the little glowing screen, with Dick Carrow across the top in Desmond's contacts.

"Richard." Desmond's voice is gentle. "Thank you. I'll call you when we're on the plane."

He ends the call.

The room goes silent except for the tick of the space heater.

My father has given me away twice now.

Once at a dining room table with a fountain pen, and once from twelve hundred miles away without getting out of bed.