Chapter 10 - HE SAVED ME WITHOUT ASKING ME TO STAY
Before we went to the warehouse, Adrian asked for five minutes alone with me.
I almost said no.
Instead, I stayed.
We stood in an empty kitchen at the safe apartment.
No guards.
No family.
No Elena.
No Marco.
Just the two people who had once shared fifteen years without needing to explain every silence.
Adrian spoke first.
“I loved Elena when I was twenty-eight.”
“I know.”
“I thought I had buried that part of my life.”
“Apparently not deep enough.”
“No.”
He absorbed it.
“When she kissed me, I remembered who I used to be for one second.”
I looked away.
“That is the ugliest truth I have.”
“Then why should I trust you again?”
“You shouldn’t because I ask.”
I looked back.
He continued.
“You should only trust me if I become trustworthy again.”
No promises.
No demand for forgiveness.
No reminder of fifteen years.
That mattered more than I wanted it to.
“I don’t know if I can stay married to you.”
His face tightened.
“I know.”
“You could lose me after all this.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re still going to help me go after Marco?”
“Claire.”
He stepped closer but stopped outside arm’s reach.
“If tonight ends with you safe and divorced from me, that is better than you dead and still wearing my ring.”
My eyes burned.
That was the first moment I believed Adrian understood the difference between protecting me and possessing me.
At 11:16 p.m., we reached the printing warehouse.
I wore a microphone.
Adrian hated it.
He said nothing.
Marco waited inside beside Rachel.
Alive.
Nicholas stood near the rear door.
Elena’s brother Theo was nowhere in sight.
Marco smiled.
“Claire.”
“Let her go.”
“Open Continuity.”
I held up the token.
“Rachel first.”
Marco laughed.
“You learned negotiation from your husband.”
“No.”
I looked at Adrian’s shadow behind the frosted exterior glass.
“I learned what not to do from him.”
Marco’s smile vanished.
Rachel was released.
Mara’s people pulled her outside.
Then Marco held out a tablet.
The Continuity prompt appeared.
VOICE AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED.
I leaned toward it.
Marco watched carefully.
I said:
“The blue door should stay closed.”
ACCESS GRANTED appeared.
Marco smiled.
So did I.
Because he didn’t know what those words really meant.
Across Chicago, every Bellandi legitimate account froze.
Every Continuity file duplicated itself to three federal servers Carlo had secretly designated.
Every door in the warehouse locked.
And Adrian received one message:
DURESS PROTOCOL ACTIVE.
Marco’s face changed.
“What did you do?”
“Something I designed fifteen years ago.”
Then Nicholas raised his gun.
Not at me.
At Marco.
“I want out.”
Marco laughed.
“You think there is an out?”
A gunshot cracked into the ceiling.
Chaos erupted.
Adrian’s team moved.
I dropped behind the machinery.
When I looked up again, Marco was gone.
So was Nicholas.
But on the floor lay one printed page Marco had dropped.
It was from Continuity.
A photograph of my parents’ wrecked car.
Under it:
SECOND PARTICIPANT: N. DANE.
May you like
Nicholas had not simply helped cover up my parents’ murder.
He had been there.
