Chapter 8

The water began to rise. It seeped through the floor, cold and fast. Danielle grabbed my arm. “He has a pump. He’ll drown us if you don’t give him what he wants.”

“He wants the ledgers,” I said. “Where are they?”

“Here.” She reached under the cot and pulled out a fireproof box. “I stole them from his office years ago. He’s been keeping me alive because I memorized the codes. He thinks I’m the only one who knows them. But I wrote them down.”

I opened the box. Ledgers. Bank accounts. Names. Ellis’s entire shadow empire, built on my name and my money.

The door opened. Ellis stood there with a .38 in his hand. His suit was wet. His silver hair was plastered to his skull. He looked at Danielle, then at Toby, then at me.

“Put the box down,” he said.

I didn’t.

“I’ll shoot the boy first,” Ellis said. “Then her. Then you.”

Toby stepped in front of me. “Don’t hurt my mom.”

Ellis’s face twitched. “Toby, come here.”

“No.” Toby’s voice shook, but he didn’t move. “You locked us in the dark. You told me Uncle Marcus was dead. You said you were keeping us safe.”

“I was.” Ellis’s gun wavered. “I kept you alive. I fed you. I taught you to read. Everything I did was for you.”

“You hurt her,” Toby said. “You hurt my mom.”

Danielle stood up. She was weak, but she faced Ellis without flinching. “He’s your son, Ellis. You don’t get to be his father now.”

The words hit me like a fist. Toby was Ellis’s biological son. Danielle had been pregnant when she vanished. Ellis had raped her, kept her, bred her, and raised the boy as a hostage. The room spun.

Ellis’s eyes filled with something like grief. “I loved you, Danny.”

“You loved controlling me,” she said.

He raised the gun. I moved. My cane sword was still in my hand. I knocked the gun aside with the wolf-head handle. It fired into the ceiling. I twisted Ellis’s wrist. The .38 fell. I put him against the wall, sword at his throat.

“Don’t kill him,” Toby said.

I looked down. The boy was crying. “He’s my father. Please. Don’t kill him.”

My hand tightened on the sword. Ten years. Ten years of my sister in the dark. Ten years of lies. I wanted to open his throat.

But Toby was looking at me. Danielle was looking at me. And I knew that if I killed him, I would become the thing they had escaped.

I lowered the sword.