Chapter 7 - The Price of a BrotherElias Voss stood beneath the mansion's iron gate with his hands raised.
Six black vehicles blocked the driveway behind him. Their headlights cut through the rain, illuminating armed men in dark coats. None of them moved until Rhett appeared on the balcony above the entrance.
“Where's Isa?” Elias called.
“Safe,” Rhett replied.
“Then let her come outside.”
“No.”
Elias laughed once, bitterly.
“Still giving orders to everyone around you. I suppose some things never change.”
Rhett descended the front steps with Anton and four guards behind him.
“You've surrendered to my house with six vehicles full of armed men. Forgive me if I don't welcome you with champagne.”
Elias lowered his hands.
“You have something Conrad wants. I have something he wants even more.”
“What?”
“My life.”
He opened his coat.
Beneath it was a small explosive device secured to his chest.
Anton raised his gun.
“Don't move!”
“Relax,” Elias said. “It's not connected to a trigger. If I wanted this driveway destroyed, you'd already be looking at smoke.”
Rhett studied him.
“You expect me to believe you walked into my territory wearing a bomb because you're feeling sentimental?”
“No. I expect you to understand that Conrad has been hunting me for eight years. Tonight, he finally caught something worth trading.”
Rhett glanced at the vehicles.
“Where is my mother?”
“I don't know.”
“Then you came here for nothing.”
“No.” Elias's gaze shifted toward the upper balcony. “I came because Isa is in danger, and you're the only person powerful enough to help her.”
Behind the glass, Isa watched them.
She had insisted on coming downstairs despite her injuries. Anton had refused, and she had ignored him. Now she stood in the shadows, one hand pressed against her ribs.
When Elias saw her, his expression broke.
“I'm sorry,” he called.
She shook her head.
“Don't do this again!”
“I have to.”
“No, you don't!”
Elias looked at Rhett.
“Conrad has my sister's medical records, her old photographs, and the original documents from the warehouse fire. He's been collecting proof of who she is for years. He knew she'd eventually discover the ledger.”
“Why didn't you tell her?”
“Because she was safer believing I was dead.”
Isa pushed past the guards and came down the steps.
“You decided that for me?”
Elias closed his eyes.
“Isa.”
“You left me alone with strangers. You let me believe every member of my family was gone. I spent three years working inside a house full of people who might have killed my father, and you watched from the shadows.”
“I was protecting you.”
“You were afraid.”
The words struck harder than a slap.
Elias looked at his sister and said nothing.
Rhett watched them, recognizing the same expression he had seen in his own mirror after his father's funeral. Guilt disguised as authority. Love twisted into decisions that hurt the people it was supposed to protect.
Before anyone could speak, a loudspeaker crackled from the lead vehicle.
Conrad's voice filled the driveway.
“Rhett, how touching. The family reunion I've been waiting eight years to attend.”
A camera mounted above the gate turned toward the balcony.
“Bring me the key and the recorder. Send Isadora outside. Do that, and Marcus walks away with his life.”
Rhett stared at the camera.
“You already tried to kill her.”
“And failed. We all make mistakes.”
The loudspeaker clicked.
Then a live video appeared on the security monitor beside the entrance.
Marcus sat in a chair, his wrists bound. A gunman stood behind him. Beside them was a woman in her sixties with silver hair and a scar across her left hand.
Rhett stopped breathing.
His mother looked directly into the camera.
“Rhett,” she whispered. “Don't give him what he wants.”
Conrad stepped into view.
“Your mother has become sentimental. She thinks you still have a choice.”
He placed a pistol against her temple.
“Prove her right.”
The image froze.
A countdown appeared on the monitor.
00:29:59.
Twenty-nine minutes.
Isa stared at the screen, then turned toward Rhett.
“He'll kill them.”
“Yes.”
“You have to go.”
“No.”
“Rhett, he's asking for me.”
“Which is why you're not going anywhere near him.”
She grabbed his wrist.
“Then he'll kill your mother because of me.”
Rhett looked down at her hand.
For three years, Isa had kept his mornings orderly, his coffee warm, and his life strangely quiet. He had mistaken her silence for simplicity.
Now she was standing in his doorway, injured and terrified, trying to save his family even though his family had helped destroy hers.
He covered her fingers with his own.
“Listen to me,” he said. “Conrad thinks everyone has a price. He believes he can buy my loyalty with my mother and your life.”
He looked toward the gate.
“He has forgotten something.”
“What?”
Rhett's expression turned cold.
“I am the man who decides what this family is willing to lose.”
He turned to Anton.
“Get the cars ready. Call every captain who still answers to me. Nobody fires a shot until I give the order.”
Then he faced Isa.
“You're staying here.”
She shook her head.
“I won't let him trade your life for mine.”
“He won't.”
“Rhett, I know him.”
“So do I.”
He stepped closer.
“And tonight, we're going to make him regret thinking he knows us.”
The countdown continued.
Twenty-eight minutes.
Twenty-seven.
Then Isa's phone vibrated.
A message appeared from an unknown number.
Your brother has already betrayed you. Ask Rhett what was written on the final page of the ledger.
Isa slowly lifted her eyes to Rhett.
His expression told her the sender had found the one secret he could not answer.
May you like
The countdown reached twenty-six minutes.
And for the first time, Isa wondered whether the man she had come to expose was the same man she had begun to love.
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