He looked at me.
“Mom.”
“No.”
“I got us into this.”
“You do not get to turn guilt into suicide.”
His expression cracked.
“I need to do one thing right.”
I stared at him.
Then I remembered Arthur.
The way he had loved Daniel without needing blood to justify it.
I touched my son’s face.
“Then come back alive.”
Daniel nodded.
The meeting began at midnight.
Martin stood beneath exposed concrete beams.
Vanessa sat tied to a chair.
Bruised, but conscious.
Daniel carried a case.
“Ledger,” Martin said.
“Vanessa first.”
Martin smiled.
“You sound like Arthur.”
Daniel stiffened.
“That supposed to insult me?”
“No.
It’s why I hated him.”
Martin stepped closer.
“He took what belonged to my father.”
Daniel laughed.
“What?
My childhood?”
Martin’s smile faded.
“He took Eleanor.”
That stunned me even through the surveillance van audio.
Richard Cole had loved me.
Or believed he had.
Years before Daniel’s birth, Richard and I had worked briefly at the same accounting firm.
He pursued me.
I rejected him.
Months later, after a drunken office party during a separation from Arthur, Imade one mistake.
