by Meli Raine
“The meeting’s an important formality,” I say as we walk up the front steps.
“It better be. Because I don’t think I have it in me to handle more.”
Jane
The towels on the chairs are a brutal reminder that what we just experienced isn’t even close to normal.
“I called you here because we’ve reached a point where keeping the truth from you is more dangerous than giving it to you,” my father says as I sink into a thickly upholstered tweed chair. His townhouse is all distinguished brick and polished dark wood, making the home feel cavernous, serious.
Imperial.
Spirited away to this location after the fiasco at the Margin of Error, we’re a motley crew. There were pieces of Nolan Corning’s brain all over the front of my shirt. Harry found an old business shirt in a closet to lend to me. The fatherly offering is nice and all, but I’m too fractured to appreciate the gesture.
“What does that mean?” Silas and I say in unison. He’s resting the back of his head against the edge of his chair, a big ice pack covering his occipital lobe. The blood has stopped. He’s covered in it. So am I. We look like the leads in a horror movie.
Which is what life feels like right now.
“It means I can no longer protect you, Jane. I have to offer you all of the details so you can make decisions for yourself. Giving you the full truth no longer threatens you more, as it did in the past. That balance has shifted. Do you understand?” My father’s words are blunt and horrifying.
“No. Why would hiding the truth from me ever have been a good idea?”
“Let me tell you the full scope of this story, which stretches back to before you were born, and see if you comprehend the why.”
I lean back in my chair. “Go for it.” One deep inhale and I smell my day – sex, blood, gore, sweat, fear. Who knew the nose could find so much textured memory on the body?
“Gentian,” he says grudgingly, “I called you here, and Drew, because Jane and Lindsay are at extreme risk. I want them as safe as possible. Take them wherever they need to go. There is no place here – especially in California or D.C. – where their lives aren’t threatened.”
“Why isn’t Lindsay here?” I ask, angry on her behalf for being excluded.
Just then, the door opens. Marshall and Lindsay enter, sit down, and stare at Silas.
It takes a few beats for Lindsay to pull her attention away from my blood-soaked boyfriend and notice me.
Her jaw drops.
“I need to do this quickly. We have a major problem with security. All of you are vetted. But only you.” He pointedly looks at Drew, Silas, and Marshall.
“Why are Silas and Jane covered in blood? And whose blood?” Lindsay demands.
I start to answer, but Drew cuts me off, addressing Harry.
“Get to it,” Drew says, antsy. “I need to get men in place, order transportation, align safehouses –” His eyes cut to Silas as if to say, And not Margin of Error.
Silas closes his eyes. There are spots of drying blood on his eyelids.
“Monica is working with Nolan Corning and worked with El Brujo. She’s the source of damn near every malicious activity that has taken place over the last five years,” Marshall says. Harry’s eyes dart to him, cold and unyielding.
“What?” Lindsay gasps. Not from surprise. From the shock of hearing someone finally utter it aloud, with her father present. Our father.
And he’s not denying it.
“Five years,” Drew says. “Five years?” The curl at the end of the last word rises up like a tendril of smoke, spiraling until it dissolves, the only hint of its existence the lingering scent. His words are for Harry and Harry alone.
“She was indirectly responsible for what happened to Lindsay, yes. And to you,” Harry acknowledges with a nod to Drew.
“Sonofabitch,” he grinds out. “Not surprised. I’ve been trying to tell you, Harry. The confirmation doesn’t make it sting any less.”
Lindsay lets out a muted sound from the back of her throat. “Mom ordered them to do that to me?”
“No, no,” Harry says, sitting up quickly. “She didn’t. Corning was the one who came up with that plan. He wanted to destroy me when he realized how much power I’d coalesced without his help. Guys like Corning are a dime a dozen in D.C., but the really nasty ones find their way to the top. With help.”
“El Brujo’s help.”
“And your mother’s.”
“How did Mom have that kind of power?” Lindsay asks.
“She... cultivated it.”
“Does this have anything to do with my biological father?” Lindsay asks plaintively. No anger. Just a kind of pleading that makes everyone go somber.
I feel like someone smacked me.
She doesn’t know.
She. Doesn’t. Know. Yet.
“No. Corning is not your biological father,” Drew says in a tone that makes Harry lean toward him. All the skin on my body tingles, each hair follicle standing up, like static electricity calls it. Lindsay looks helpless, confused –
Then angry.
“Besides, Corning’s dead,” Silas says in a weary tone that makes me want to hug him. “I just killed him.”
“WHAT?” Harry bellows. “WHERE?”
“At the Margin of Error.”
“What the hell is the Margin of Error?” Harry demands.
“Sex club,” Marshall replies, watching Silas carefully. “What were you doing in D.C.’s most exclusive sex club?”
“Teaching macramé, Marshall. What the hell do you think I was doing? Protecting Jane.”
“You took my daughter to a sex club to protect her?” Harry bellows.
“Long story,” Silas replies.
“I want to hear every detail,” Harry snaps.
I blush. Not that anyone notices underneath all the smeared blood on my face.
“Can we get back to the issue of my father? Who is it?” Lindsay asks.
Harry’s eyes lock on Drew, mouth tight, head shaking slightly. No, that gesture says. Don’t do it. Don’t say it. Don’t unleash it.
Once you do, we never go back.
“We had a meeting with Mark Paulson,” Drew continues. “He ran the DNA. No match on El Brujo. But there was a strange match. We can’t explain how it all connected to your biological father, but bottom line: we found him.”
“What do you mean, ‘strange’?” Harry looks uncomfortable. This is information he doesn’t know. The man is accustomed to knowing everything. Uncertainty is his enemy more than Nolan Corning.
“Lindsay’s brother came up in a database. From there we traced her father,” Drew tells him, turning to her.
“Brother?” she chokes out. “I have a brother?”
Tap tap tap.
“Who the hell is that?” Harry snaps.
The door opens.
Mark Paulson stands there.
And he’s staring at Lindsay.
Chapter 22
Jane
Drew takes Lindsay’s hand.
She looks wildly around the room. Her eyes stop at Mark Paulson. She frowns and asks him, “What are you doing here?”
“I’m here,” he says softly, holding a folder in one hand, “to explain who your biological father really is.”
Harry goes white with shock.
“What the hell does Senator Thornberg’s grandson have to do with Lindsay’s paternity?” he demands.
“A whole lot more than he should,” Mark replies, slapping the folder on the table in front of Harry as he turns to Lindsay. “I don’t know how else to say this, so I’ll just say it: I’m your half brother, Lindsay. Your biological father is a man named Paul Ellison. He is also my father. You and I are siblings.”
Harry’s mouth opens and closes, but no words come out.
“Who – what? Paul Ellison?” She looks at me. “Why is that name so familiar?”
“Remember the man in the magazine articles? The reports from Alice Mogrett? The th
ird one, other than Ignatio Landau and Nolan Corning?”
Lindsay’s eyes are big as moons.
“How did you figure this out?” she whispers, staring at Mark.
“By accident,” he says ruefully. “Your DNA and mine were eventually run against each other. I came up as a sibling match. Wasn’t hard to figure out the rest. We got our hands on Galt’s DNA and –”
“Galt?”
“My dad’s – uh, our dad’s – assumed name. It’s what he’s best known as these days. He’s changed his name many times.”
Harry lets out a growl, an atavistic sound that makes all of my organs clench with fear. “This has to be a joke. Paul Ellison worked for me! He was an ADA when I was with the DA’s office. You’re telling me my wife was fucking him when I was his boss?”
Mark taps the folder. “No joke. Lab reports are right there. It’s all true.”
“Monica really never told you, did she?” Drew says to Harry, his hand still covering Lindsay’s. “You said all along you didn’t know, and you were telling the truth.”
“Of course I told the truth! I am an honorable man.”
Half the room snorts. He may be a presidential candidate and a sitting senator, but in this moment, my father is just a really nasty piece of work.
“Who screwed his own assistant and hid the baby from the world,” I add. “Hid the truth from that child. From everyone. Honorable. Right. You have no grounds for judging Monica, Daddy.”
Lindsay flinches as the word comes out of my mouth. Remorse fills me. I don’t want to hurt her.
I do want to hurt Harry.
“You just got finished telling us that Monica is a danger to our physical safety,” Silas says with a groan of pain. “That we have to get Jane and Lindsay out of here.”
“Meanwhile,” Drew interjects, “all these money-laundering leaks continue. Eleven senators now.”
“Twelve,” Harry says with more emotion than he showed about Lindsay’s paternity.
Marshall clears his throat. “They hit Harry.”
“I knew it!” Drew hisses.
“You are my brother?” Lindsay says in a tone of wonder, looking at Mark. The room is filled with too many conversations at cross purposes. Too many competing agendas. Unfortunately, the most important topic – Lindsay’s biological foundation – is getting shoved under the rug by Harry’s news.
Then again, that’s how this works.
Harry is the center of the universe. Everything else revolves around him.
“You were laundering?” Mark asks, drawn into Harry’s admission.
“No,” he denies. “I wasn’t. They have all this evidence on me, but it doesn’t make sense. Accounts and deposits. Offshore money movement. Campaign contributions from El Brujo I never solicited. It goes back a long way, to my first campaign, and I have no explanation for it.”
“Or you’re lying,” Drew says bluntly.
“Why would I lie now? I have nothing to hide on this.” Harry stands up and walks around the table, his pacing a series of half-moons turning slow and steady. “I never made deals with those men. Corning came to me decades ago, long before I ran for state office, even, and tried to get me to go along with his scheme. It got worse later, once I was in the Senate. I always said no.”
“Maybe you’re not the one who said yes,” I say, the puzzle pieces coming together. “What if Monica was secretly working with Corning and Landau? Funneling money through your campaign to get them to help get you into the White House some day.”
He shakes his head. “Makes no sense. If word ever got out, I’d be ruined.”
“Like now,” Marshall says. “It’s going to be hard to prove you didn’t do it. The money trail is clear.”
“I didn’t do it. Could all the accounts have been hacked?”
“Money goes back too far. You’ve got dirty money stretching into your first campaign run.”
“Shit,” Harry says, exhaling through clenched teeth. “That bad?”
“That bad.”
“Where did it go?” Mark Paulson asks.
“The money? How the hell would I know? It was laundered. It went in and out of my campaign accounts. Looks like I was in cahoots with Landau.”
“There had to have been tat if there was tit,” Drew says.
Harry gives him a sour look.
“Monica slept with Paul Ellison. Why? What strategic advantage did it give her? Your parents were already divorced, right?” Marshall asks Mark, who does a double take.
“How would you know that?”
“Simple dates. I looked up your personnel records. So why would Monica go after a guy who had no real connections?”
Mark smirks. “Ask the senator.” He frowns. “And why the hell are you looking up my personnel records?”
“How would I know?” Harry asks Mark, clearly confused.
“Was Monica trying to establish a link to Thornberg, however tenuous?”
“Or some kind of blackmail to use? Risky on her part, for sure.” Marshall stops Harry and looks up at him. “You accepted a baby that wasn’t yours?”
“I didn’t know,” Harry groans. “I just knew Anya was pregnant, I was about to divorce Monica, and then suddenly she was pregnant and I was staring at some healthy offers to fund a future campaign. It wasn’t exactly an easy time in my life.”
“It sounds like a bet. A horrible bet. A wager, a deal, a bad, bad gamble that paid off in the short run but turned toxic at the end,” Lindsay says. “With lots of pawns.”
“Is it a bet, or a chess game?” Drew asks her.
“It’s a mess,” says a voice from behind us all.
We turn to find Monica Bosworth standing there.
Staring at Harry in disgust.
Silas
I should stand up.
I should grab my gun.
I should react. But how? My head is a sputtering engine with a piston problem inside it and I’m bleeding everywhere. Tell me how I’m supposed to respond.
Drew’s watching Monica like she’s a poisonous snake, but no one in the room seems to know what to do.
Harry says, “There are documents showing money laundering in my campaign, with El Brujo. Got something to tell me, Monica?”
“I came here to ask you the same question, Harry.” When I look at her, I smell roses. Burnt sugar. Something like cotton and the faint odor of tobacco. My head pounds from the blow earlier, and I wonder if weird smells can be a sign of a concussion.
Monica moves past me and the odor strengthens.
“Oh, no. No, you don’t. You don’t get to pin this on me. Holy shit, Monica. You fucked Paul Ellison? Lindsay’s father is – him?” Harry booms.
“So you know,” she says, her voice robotic. She looks at Mark. “I always thought she looked like you.” Her calm unnerves me. Drew locks eyes with me and wordlessly says everything.
Shit’s about to go down.
“It’s true, then?” Harry calls out.
“Of course it’s true, you idiot. They have the DNA results,” she snaps at him. “You knew Lindsay wasn’t yours.” She looks at me. “And who was yours.”
“Is. Don’t talk about Jane in the past tense,” Harry responds. “She is mine.”
Monica bites her lower lip.
His words make me sick.
“You always focused on the wrong details, Harry. It was your weakness, my strength. Once you had a vision, you could enact it. Stay the course. Think big. Get people to back you. But you weren’t the initiator. I was. Had to be. And when Alice introduced me to Ig at one of her openings at my parents’ art gallery, it was fate. Because finally, I found a man with vision.”
“And money,” Drew says.
I sit up and plant my feet firmly on the ground. The Cowboy Defender is still in my pocket, so small, no one would ever suspect I had a gun in there.
A gun with one round left.
“So much money,” Monica says with a laugh that makes my split scalp tingle. “Ignatio Lan
dau built an empire you could only dream of running,” she spits out at Harry.
“I have no desire to be king of a criminal enterprise.”
“What the hell do you think the presidency is?” Her chuckle is low and horrifying. “You can’t be a Boy Scout and work in the Oval Office. You’re a fool. Always have been, always will be.”
“We put it all together, Monica,” Drew tells her. “Nolan Corning wanted someone he could raise from the bottom up, a rising star he could groom. Harry refused to play, but you joined the game right away. All these years, you’ve been laundering money for El Brujo and Corning. Influencing Harry’s votes when you could. Using all these favors in your network to get to the White House.”
“It was working. It was. Until you and Anya threw it all away,” she says to Harry sadly.
Jane sits up straight suddenly, turning her whole body toward Monica. “What?”
“This idiot told me once his second term was up, he was leaving the Senate, leaving me, and running off with your mother!” Monica bursts out, giving Jane a heaping dose of verbal venom. “Throwing it all away for love. You and Lindsay were off at college and he said it was time. Time to try to live ‘the life he really wanted’ in his remaining decades.” Monica frowns at Jane, looking her up and down. “Is that Harry’s shirt you’re wearing?”
She’s more offended by that than the blood all over Jane.
“Really? You and my mom were going to be together?” Jane asks Harry plaintively.
“Yes.” His simple answer surprises me. “Finally. We were.”
“But that would mean he’d leave the Senate. Leave politics. That couldn’t happen. Not after all these years of hard work,” Monica fumes.
“So you hired John, Blaine, and Stellan to attack Lindsay?” Drew asks.
“No!” She whips around to look at Jane. “They were supposed to attack you.”
“WHAT?” Half the room shouts the same word.
“If Anya were tainted by scandal, and Harry’s precious secret love child were tainted, he’d stay with me. You were so annoying.” She stretches the last word out as she looks at Jane. “Harry insisted we bring you on vacations. Include you in events. Pay for your private school. You were a sickening reminder I had to face for years.”
