Chapter 4: The Brother in the Shadows
The east sitting room had a cream sofa and a lamp that cast soft yellow light.
Someone brought a blanket without being asked.
Marcus was asleep within ten minutes, his stuffed dog tucked under his chin, his coloring book still clutched in one hand.
I sat beside him and watched him breathe.
A guard stood near the door.
Young.
Quiet.
He hadn't spoken since he walked us in.
I had nothing to do but think.
Thomas Cray.
A brother Dominic had been cutting out of the business.
A man who had decided that four years of silence and a device smaller than a fingernail was preferable to losing his inheritance.
He had been at the party tonight.
Somewhere in those rooms full of expensive gowns and champagne, he had been watching.
Waiting to hear that everything was still under control.
Instead, a three-year-old had pulled the device out with his fingers.
I looked at Marcus's hand, still curled loosely around the coloring book.
The door opened.
Dominic came in alone.
He moved differently than he had in the conservatory.
More carefully, like a man relearning how to trust his own senses.
Every sound in the room — the rain against the window, the soft hiss of the lamp, Marcus's slow breathing — seemed to reach him a half-second after it happened, and he would pause, almost imperceptibly, to process it.
He stopped a few feet from the sofa.
"He's asleep," he said quietly.
"Yes."
"I'm sorry you're still here.
I'll have someone drive you home within the hour."
"That's not what I was thinking about."
He looked at me.
"What were you thinking about?"
"Thomas was here tonight.
In the ballroom.
With all those people."
"Yes."
"He was watching you."
"He's been watching me for three years." Dominic sat down in the chair across from us.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and for a moment he just looked at Marcus.
"He sent Victor a message eleven minutes after your son removed the device.
He knew something had gone wrong.
He was already moving."
"Where is he now?"
"We don't know yet."
The rain tapped the window.
Marcus shifted in his sleep and murmured something that wasn't a word.
"Victor said it wasn't supposed to be permanent," I said.
"Victor says a lot of things."
"Do you believe him?"
Dominic was quiet for a moment.
"I believe Thomas told him that.
Whether Thomas believed it himself is a different question." He picked up the small metallic device from his jacket pocket — someone had bagged it in a clear envelope — and looked at it.
"This is a neural suppression implant.
Military-grade.
It doesn't block sound the way earplugs do.
It intercepts the signal between the ear canal and the auditory nerve and scrambles it.
Completely reversible if you know it's there." He set it back in his pocket.
"The doctors I saw for three years didn't know it was there.
They were looking for damage.
There wasn't any."
I stared at him.
"Someone implanted that while you were unconscious."
"In the hospital.
After the warehouse explosion.
The explosion itself was real — an accident, as far as I can tell.
But I was unconscious for thirty-six hours afterward.
Thomas arranged for a private surgeon.
Victor managed the access." He paused.
"They told the medical staff it was a specialist.
A hearing consultant."
"And nobody questioned it."
"Nobody questions things in my world the way they perhaps should." His voice was dry, but there was something underneath it.
Not bitterness.
Something older than that.
"Three years," I said.
"Three years."
Marcus made a small sound.
His hand released the coloring book and it slid to the cushion beside him.
I picked it up and set it on the side table.
"Your son," Dominic said.
"Marcus."
"Yes."
"He wasn't afraid of me."
"He's three.
He's not afraid of anything he doesn't understand yet."
"Most adults aren't afraid of things they don't understand either.
They're just afraid of things they've been told to be afraid of." He looked at me.
"How long have you worked here?"
"Eight months."
"Victor hired you."
"Yes."
Something shifted in his expression.
"I'll want to speak with you properly.
Not tonight.
But soon." He stood.
"The guard outside will take you to the car when you're ready.
I'll make sure you're paid for the full evening, and for any inconvenience."
"Mr.
Cray."
He stopped.
"Marcus asked me if the bug man was going to come back." I met his eyes.
"I didn't know what to tell him."
Dominic looked at my son for a long moment.
"Tell him no," he said.
"Tell him the bug is gone."
He left before I could say anything else.
I sat with Marcus until the guard knocked softly on the door twenty minutes later.
I carried my son out through a side entrance, into a black car idling in the rain.
I didn't look back at the mansion.
But as the car pulled through the iron gates, my phone buzzed.
An unknown number.
One message.
*You should have kept your son at home, Ms.
May you like
Mercer.
This isn't finished.*
