Chapter 6
The room dropped into silence.
Grant stepped toward the door.
“What does that mean?”
Raymond smiled like a man with nothing left to lose.
“It means your extraction came too late.”
Reeves grabbed his arm.
“Explain.”
Raymond looked at my stomach.
Rage flashed through me so bright I could barely see.
“Don’t look at my baby.”
He smiled wider.
“That baby is the key.”
My mother sobbed.
Victoria whispered, “Raymond, stop.”
My father turned on her.
“What do you know?”
She cried.
“I didn’t know about Marcus.”
“But you knew something.”
She shook her head.
“I thought it was just money.”
Just money.
The family motto, apparently.
Grant ordered Raymond transported.
He laughed all the way to the vehicle.
Before they shut the door, he shouted, “Ask Eleanor who introduced me to Senator Vale.”
My mother went white.
Not pale.
White.
Grant noticed.
So did I.
“Mom,” I said quietly. “Who is Senator Vale?”
She gripped the counter.
“No one.”
My father stared at her.
“Eleanor.”
She snapped, “I was protecting this family!”
I almost laughed.
From the garage.
From the cold.
From truth.
“By stealing from me?”
Her eyes filled with something worse than guilt.
Fear.
“By keeping you alive.”
Grant moved closer.
“Mrs. Bennett, you need to start talking.”
My mother shook her head.
“If I talk, he will destroy us.”
“Marcus is dead,” I said. “Raymond is in custody. Who are you afraid of?”
She looked at my belly.
Then at the frost on the window.
“Your husband found out Senator Vale was selling military routes.”
Grant’s face hardened.
“And?”
My mother whispered, “And Marcus wasn’t killed overseas.”
I stopped breathing.
May you like
She looked at me with tears running down her face.
“He was killed here.”
