Chapter 7 - My Brother Pointed the Gun at Me.
For six years, I had rehearsed conversations with a dead man.
Most people who lose someone do that.
They imagine apologies.
Arguments.
Questions that can never be answered.
Not once had I imagined Ewan pointing a gun at my chest.
"Put it down," I said.
His hand did not move.
"I said don't move."
Celeste watched from the catwalk.
She looked almost delighted.
"Family reunions are so unpredictable."
Ewan did not look at her.
His eyes stayed on me.
"The drive is a decoy."
Celeste's smile vanished.
I stared at him.
"How do you know?"
"Because our mother built two copies."
He shifted the pistol slightly.
"And because the real archive never left the house."
Celeste pulled the drive from the laptop.
"You knew?"
Ewan finally glanced toward her.
"I knew you would come for it."
"Then why are you pointing a gun at him?"
"Because Julian doesn't know how many men you brought."
Ewan's eyes moved toward the ceiling beams.
"And one of them is behind him."
A shot cracked through the warehouse.
I dropped.
Ewan fired past my shoulder.
A man hidden behind a support column fell back, his weapon skidding across the floor.
Matteo moved at the same time.
He overturned a steel table and pulled Delia's chair behind it.
Celeste's men fired from the catwalk.
Glass and rust rained down.
I crawled behind a concrete pillar.
Ewan appeared beside me seconds later.
For one absurd moment, we crouched shoulder to shoulder exactly as we had behind our father's garage when we were teenagers and had broken a neighbor's window with a baseball.
Then I looked at his scar.
Six years returned all at once.
"You let me bury you."
"Not now."
"Six years."
"Julian."
"Six years."
He grabbed my coat.
"If we live through the next six minutes, you can hit me as many times as you want."
A bullet struck the pillar.
Concrete dust filled the air.
I almost laughed.
It came out as anger instead.
"You always were generous."
Ewan checked the magazine.
"Still talking too much."
That voice.
Older.
Rougher.
But his.
I had forgotten how much I hated hearing it when he was right.
Matteo shouted from across the floor.
"Delia's free."
I looked.
He had cut the restraints.
Delia crawled toward a side corridor.
Celeste saw her.
"Stop her."
One of the men on the catwalk started down.
Ewan stood and fired once into the metal stair rail.
The man dropped behind cover.
"Go," Ewan told me.
"Where?"
"West corridor."
"Why?"
"Because that's where Elena is."
Matteo heard the name.
His face changed completely.
"Elena is here?"
Ewan nodded.
"Office at the end."
Matteo moved before I could stop him.
He ran toward the west corridor.
Celeste shouted something above us.
A second group entered through the loading doors.
My men answered from outside.
The warehouse erupted into noise.
Ewan grabbed my shoulder and pulled me toward the corridor.
We reached Delia near a broken office doorway.
She leaned against the wall, breathing hard.
"You came," she said to Ewan.
He looked at her.
Something passed between them.
Not romance.
Something older.
Shared survival.
"You told him?"
"Enough."
"Clearly not enough."
I looked from one to the other.
"I'm standing right here."
Delia almost smiled.
"You sound like him."
"I've been told."
Ewan glanced down the corridor.
"We need to move."
We found Matteo outside a locked office.
He was trying keys from a guard's ring.
His hands shook so badly he dropped them twice.
"Move."
Ewan kicked the door beside the lock.
It opened on the second strike.
A woman sat inside with her wrists tied in front of her.
Elena Russo.
Older than the bookstore photograph.
Dark hair cut to her shoulders.
Bruising around one wrist.
Alive.
Matteo made a sound I had never heard from him.
Not a word.
Something from the center of a father who had spent years believing every phone call might be the last news of his child.
He dropped to his knees in front of her.
"Elena."
She stared at him.
Then her face collapsed.
"Dad."
Matteo cut the restraints.
He held her as if she were still nine years old.
Ewan turned away to give them privacy.
I did not.
I wanted to remember what leverage looked like after it became a person again.
Elena pulled back suddenly.
"We have to leave."
"We're leaving."
"No."
She looked at Ewan.
"Celeste isn't alone."
Ewan's face hardened.
"Who?"
"Conrad."
Silence.
Matteo stared at her.
"Conrad Vandermark is dead."
Elena shook her head.
"No."
"I saw the death certificate."
"You saw what he wanted Chicago to see."
Ewan swore under his breath.
I felt the story rearrange itself again.
Conrad had supposedly died of a heart attack in Switzerland three years earlier.
Celeste inherited the company.
The board mourned him.
The newspapers printed photographs from his charity galas.
I sent flowers.
Elena looked toward the office ceiling.
"He has been running North Meridian from Canada."
"How do you know?" I asked.
"Because I've been doing his accounting."
Matteo's face went white.
"What?"
"Not by choice."
She looked at him.
"They found me two months ago."
Ewan stepped closer.
"You told me you were going to Milwaukee."
"I was trying to keep them away from you."
"You disappeared."
"Because Conrad knew you were alive."
That sentence landed harder than the gunfire outside.
"Since when?"
Elena swallowed.
"Since before the fire."
Ewan stared at her.
"No."
"The fire was never meant to kill you."
"Then what was it meant to do?"
Elena looked at me.
"Kill Julian."
No one spoke.
The gunfire outside seemed suddenly distant.
I laughed once because the alternative was to believe her.
"I wasn't at Pier 44."
"You were supposed to be."
Ewan's face changed.
He knew something.
"Tell him," Elena said.
I turned toward my brother.
"Tell me what?"
Ewan lowered his weapon.
"The meeting at Pier 44 was yours."
I felt cold.
He continued.
"You had food poisoning that night."
I remembered.
Violently sick.
Our mother had insisted I stay home.
Ewan had taken the meeting instead.
"You went in my place."
"Yes."
Elena's eyes filled with anger.
"Conrad set the fire believing Julian was inside."
I looked toward the warehouse floor where Celeste's voice still echoed.
"Why would Conrad want me dead six years ago?"
Elena answered.
"Because your father had already changed the succession documents."
"What documents?"
She looked at Ewan.
Then at me.
"The Moretti voting trust."
"If Julian died before your father, Ewan inherited everything."
"If Ewan died first, Julian inherited everything."
"But if both sons were dead—"
Matteo finished the sentence.
"The trust reverted to the marital holding company."
Elena nodded.
"And Conrad had already arranged to control it through a forged agreement."
My stomach turned.
The fire had been built to kill me.
Ewan had survived because he took my place.
Then Conrad spent six years trying to recover the evidence that proved why.
A voice came over the warehouse speakers.
Conrad Vandermark's voice.
Older than I remembered.
But unmistakable.
"Julian Moretti."
Every one of us froze.
"I have waited six years to finish a meeting with you."
At the safe house, Ewan found Delia asleep on the sofa beneath a wool blanket.
He stood in the doorway for almost a minute without entering.
I watched from the kitchen.
"You can go in," I said.
"I know."
"Then why are you standing there?"
He looked at her.
"Because every time I saw her for six years, something bad had just happened."
I understood more than I wanted to.
Delia woke anyway.
Her eyes opened and found him immediately.
"You look worse," she said.
Ewan smiled.
"Julian said the same thing."
"Then for once he's right."
She pushed herself upright.
"Why did you come to Pier 44?"
"You were there."
"That is not a reason."
"It was mine."
Delia looked at him for a long moment.
"You cannot keep appearing only when someone is in danger."
Ewan's smile faded.
"I know."
"Your brother deserves more than a rescue scene every six years."
I looked down at my coffee.
Ewan glanced toward me.
"He can hear you."
"Good."
Delia settled back against the cushion.
"Maybe if both of you start hearing things before buildings catch fire, life will improve."
Neither of us had an answer.
That was another thing Delia did well.
She could reduce six years of male pride to one practical sentence.
Before she closed her eyes again, Ewan touched the edge of the blanket.
"Thank you."
Delia did not ask what for.
"You're welcome."
I realized there were entire histories between people in my house that had existed without me.
May you like
The idea would once have offended me.
Now it humbled me.
