Chapter 2 - The Man at Harborview
I woke under fluorescent lights with a ventilator mask strapped over my face and one thought burning through the medication.
Hazel and Iris.
I tried to sit.
A nurse pushed me gently back.
“Ms. Mercer, don’t.”
“My daughters.”
“They’re safe.”
“Where?”
A shadow moved near the window.
Then Griffin Drake stepped forward.
Eight years had made him harder.
That was my first thought.
He was forty now. Taller somehow, though impossible. Thick black hair swept back from his forehead. A dark suit beneath a rain-damp overcoat. Tattoos climbed from beneath his collar along one side of his neck, marks I remembered tracing with my fingertips when we were younger and stupid enough to believe love made people invincible.
His gray eyes looked exactly like Hazel’s.
Exactly like Iris’s.
I had spent eight years pretending that resemblance would become less obvious.
It had not.
“They’re across the hall,” he said.
My throat tightened.
“You saw them?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“They refused to leave until they saw you breathing.”
That sounded like both of them.
“What happened?”
Griffin came closer.
“Your coffee contained aconitine.”
I knew enough to understand the seriousness from the nurse’s face.
“Poison?”
“Yes.”
“Enough to kill me?”
“If you’d finished the mug.”
I closed my eyes.
Someone had entered my home.
Put poison in my coffee.
Left a threat.
“How did you know?”
“Six months ago one of my warehouse supervisors collapsed after drinking from a bottle intended for me.”
Same substance.
“Who?”
“We believed it was connected to the Caruso organization.”
The name dragged an old fear from somewhere deep.
Matteo Caruso had been Griffin’s rival eight years earlier. Smuggling routes. Port contracts. Violence disguised as business disputes.
“I thought Caruso was dead.”
“Matteo is.”
“Then?”
“His brother isn’t.”
I stared.
“Vittorio?”
Griffin nodded.
Vittorio Caruso had vanished after Matteo’s death and supposedly fled to Europe.
Apparently Seattle had not been lucky enough to lose him permanently.
“What does he want with my daughters?”
Griffin’s jaw hardened.
“They aren’t targets because of who they are.”
I waited.
“They’re targets because of what they can prove.”
I frowned.
“What?”
Before he could answer, the door opened.
Hazel ran in.
“Mom!”
I barely had time to lift my arms.
Iris followed more carefully, eyes red from crying.
They climbed onto both sides of the hospital bed.
I kissed their hair repeatedly.
“I’m okay.”
Hazel cried harder.
“You looked dead.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You weren’t talking.”
“I know.”
Iris looked at Griffin.
“He knew what poison it was.”
Children collect important details.
“Yes.”
Hazel wiped her face.
“Mom?”
“What?”
“Is he our dad?”
There it was.
No preparation.
No privacy.
No chance to create the calm conversation I had imagined a hundred times without ever planning to actually have.
I looked at Griffin.
He looked at me.
Anger lived there.
Not explosive anger.
The kind that had waited eight years to understand why.
“I need to talk to Griffin first.”
Hazel frowned.
“That means yes.”
Iris nodded.
“She uses that voice when answer is yes but complicated.”
Traitors.
Griffin almost smiled.
“You’ve raised detectives.”
“I noticed.”
Hazel turned toward Griffin.
“Do you want to be?”
He froze.
“Be what?”
“Our dad.”
My chest hurt.
Griffin crouched beside her.
“I don’t know everything yet.”
“But if you are?”
His voice became rough.
“If I’m your father, then yes. I want every day I should have had.”
I looked away.
Because that sentence was aimed partly at me.
After the girls were taken to the family lounge with Griffin’s security chief, Elias Kane, he closed the hospital door.
The silence changed instantly.
“Eight years.”
“Griffin—”
“Eight years, Sloan.”
“I know.”
“You knew.”
“Yes.”
He turned away.
One hand went through his hair.
“Were you ever going to tell me?”
I answered honestly.
“I don’t know.”
He laughed once.
There was no humor.
“I deserved better.”
“Yes.”
That stopped him.
Maybe he expected defense.
“You did.”
“Then why?”
“Because three days before I discovered I was pregnant, a man was shot outside your club.”
“Not by me.”
“I know.”
“My enemies didn’t.”
“I know.”
“You thought running was safer.”
“I knew running was safer.”
His eyes hardened.
“Apparently not.”
That landed.
I looked toward the black envelope sealed in an evidence bag near the nurse’s station.
“No.”
He came closer.
“Why keep my number?”
I had no safe answer.
“Because deleting it felt too final.”
Something moved in his expression.
Pain.
Then:
“Did you ever call?”
“No.”
“Did you ever almost?”
“Every birthday.”
He looked away.
I continued because once truth begins, stopping becomes another lie.
“When Hazel had pneumonia at three, I typed your number.”
His eyes closed.
“When Iris broke her wrist, I almost called.”
He said nothing.
“First day of kindergarten.”
Silence.
“Every December fourteenth.”
His jaw flexed.
“I hated you,” he said.
“I know.”
“I thought you left because you finally saw what I was and decided I disgusted you.”
My throat tightened.
“That wasn’t it.”
“You told me Boston.”
“I never went.”
“I checked.”
Of course he had.
“I know.”
“You knew I looked?”
“I assumed.”
“And kept hiding.”
“Yes.”
A long silence.
Then he asked:
“Were you afraid of me?”
Eight years collapsed into one answer.
“No.”
His eyes lifted.
“I was afraid of what loving you made possible.”
That hurt him differently.
Because Griffin understood leverage.
We both did.
He sat.
For the first time, he looked tired.
“What did Caruso mean by the girls proving something?”
I asked.
Griffin stared at the floor.
“Before Matteo Caruso died, he accused me of stealing from a port fund.”
“You told me.”
“I thought it was retaliation.”
“It wasn’t?”
“Partially.”
He took out his phone.
Showed me an old photograph.
Griffin.
A younger Matteo.
And a city councilman named Andrew Pierce.
Pierce had disappeared seven years ago.
“What am I looking at?”
“The night before you left, Pierce gave me a ledger.”
“What ledger?”
“Payments connecting Caruso businesses to officials.”
“Why does that involve me?”
“Because I gave you something that night.”
My blood chilled.
“What?”
“You were leaving my apartment the next morning. I slipped a flash drive into your architecture portfolio because my place was being watched.”
I stared.
“I never found a flash drive.”
“Neither did I.”
My mind raced backward.
The blue portfolio.
I had kept it for years.
Then donated several old design cases during our move to Tacoma.
“No.”
Griffin watched me.
“You still have it?”
“I don’t know.”
His expression changed.
The threat had said:
WE KNOW WHO THE GIRLS ARE.
Not we know where Sloan is.
The girls.
Why?
Then I remembered something Iris once told me.
She had found an old “shiny stick” inside one of my model cases two years earlier and used it as treasure in a dollhouse.
My heart stopped.
“Iris.”
Griffin stood.
“What?”
“She might have it.”
We called Elias.
He answered immediately.
“Iris is here.”
“Put her on.”
My daughter’s voice came through.
“Mom?”
“Sweetheart, remember the silver computer thing you found in my old architecture box?”
“Yes.”
Griffin and I exchanged looks.
“Where is it?”
“My treasure box.”
“At home?”
“Yes.”
Griffin’s entire body went still.
The house was now a crime scene.
Police present.
Good.
Then Iris added:
“But I took it to school yesterday for show-and-tell.”
I closed my eyes.
“Where is it now?”
“In my backpack.”
Elias said something in the background.
Then:
“I have the backpack.”
Griffin exhaled.
“Bring it directly to me.”
Ten minutes later, the flash drive sat between us.
Old.
Scratched.
Eight years forgotten.
Griffin stared at it.
“If this is what I think it is, Vittorio has spent years searching for evidence he believed disappeared with you.”
My stomach dropped.
“And now he knows I have children.”
“He knows something else.”
“What?”
Griffin looked at me.
“The ledger doesn’t just expose Caruso.”
A terrible pause.
“It exposes people inside my organization.”
My breath caught.
“Who?”
“That’s what I never got to find out.”
We plugged the drive into an isolated laptop.
Encrypted folders appeared.
One file opened without password.
A photograph.
Griffin and me eight years earlier.
Taken secretly outside my apartment.
Underneath was a typed message.
DRAKE’S WEAKNESS CONFIRMED. FEMALE SUBJECT PREGNANT.
I stared.
“What?”
Griffin went pale.
“They knew you were pregnant before I did.”
Then another file.
Payment recipient:
ELIAS KANE.
May you like
Griffin’s most trusted man.
The person currently sitting across the hall with our daughters.
