Chapter 5 - THE BOY IN THE HOSTAGE VIDEO
Owen Lawson was twenty years old, lanky, funny when he wanted to be, and incapable of remembering to buy milk even when Fay texted him twice.
He was not made for hostage videos.
Which was why the thirty-eight-second clip Brandon sent less than an hour later made Fay feel as if someone had reached into her body and twisted her heart by hand.
Owen sat in a metal chair under harsh white light, wrists zip-tied in front of him, a bruise rising along one cheek. He looked scared and furious in equal measure. Behind him stood two men Fay had never seen before.
“Fay,” Owen said into the camera, trying too hard to sound steady, “if this gets to you, don’t do what they say.”
The camera jerked. Someone offscreen hit him hard enough to knock his head sideways.
Then Brandon stepped into frame.
Gone was the ballroom flirt. Gone was the polished grin that needed approval. He looked the same, and yet completely different—clean, composed, and much more dangerous for not pretending to be charming.
“Your brother gives terrible advice,” he said pleasantly. “Bring Mr. Hales what he wants, and maybe he keeps breathing.”
The video ended.
Fay replayed it once because panic makes idiots of people, and then immediately wished she hadn’t because the bruise seemed darker the second time.
“He hit my brother.”
No one answered. There was no useful response to that.
They were in a different room now—an upper floor in the same building as the Grave, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a black ribbon of river and a city that seemed entirely unaware of what kinds of decisions were being made inside it.
Griffin stood by the glass speaking quietly to someone on a headset while his broad-shouldered security chief, whose name Fay had finally learned was Roman, coordinated movement through an earpiece by the door.
When Griffin finished the call, Fay rounded on him.
“Get him back.”
He looked at her.
“Working on it.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“No,” he said. “It isn’t.”
The absence of defensiveness unsettled her. It would have been easier if he snapped back. Instead he let the truth stand there: yes, it wasn’t enough, and yes, they both knew it.
“What does Brandon want?” she demanded. “The card? Take it.”
“He wants the rest of the ledger.”
“I don’t have it!”
“He thinks you do. Or thinks you can lead him to someone who does.”
Fay grabbed the back of a chair so hard her knuckles hurt. “My family had nothing to do with any of this.”
Griffin moved away from the window, his hands in his trouser pockets, controlled as always.
“Your father did.”
“Thirteen years ago!”
“In my world,” Griffin said, “thirteen years is a pause, not a forgiveness.”
She hated the line because it was good.
“And what is your world exactly?” she shot back. “Because you keep saying it like it explains everything.”
He tilted his head slightly.
“It explains enough.”
“No, it excuses enough.”
Roman glanced toward them once and then, wisely, focused on his phone again.
Griffin walked to the table, picked up her father’s shears, and turned them in his hands.
“My father built power by keeping records no one else dared put in writing,” he said. “The Black Iris Ledger kept politicians obedient and enemies predictable. When Dominic Hales died, half the city pretended to mourn him while privately celebrating the chance to erase what he knew. Simon Lawson vanished with the ledger before anyone else could secure it.”
Fay stared.
“You really think my father just ran off with it?”
“I think your father made a choice.”
“You don’t know whether it was theft or survival.”
“No,” Griffin said. “I don’t.”
The honesty again. The annoying, surgical honesty that made it harder to call him merely a liar.
“So why not let Brandon have me?” she asked. “He obviously thinks I matter.”
Roman looked up sharply at that. Griffin’s face did not move at all.
“Because Brandon Cole is not asking for you,” he said. “He’s asking for leverage. If I hand you over tonight, he gets the one person Simon Lawson trusted enough to leave a trail, and I show every predator in this city that they can force my hand by touching someone under my roof.”
Fay let out a bitter laugh.
“Under your roof? I kissed you by accident. That doesn’t make me yours.”
A strange, unreadable silence crossed his face.
Then he said, “No. It makes you public.”
That line landed harder than she wanted it to.
Public meant seen.
Named.
Marked.
“And public people survive how?”
“They learn quickly.”
She wanted to hate that too, but the truth was already doing its work inside her. Brandon had not merely taken Owen. He had declared open hunting season.
Griffin set the shears down.
“There was another file on the card,” he said.
Fay looked up.
“What file?”
Roman handed over a tablet. Griffin tapped once and turned it toward her.
Not a ledger entry this time.
A video.
Fay hesitated, then pressed play.
The screen showed June Avery sitting in the back room of the flower shop. Same red-framed reading glasses. Same cigarette burn on the worktable edge behind her. She looked exhausted and scared.
“If you’re watching this, petal, then either Simon was right or we all ran out of time,” June said.
Fay stopped breathing.
June looked directly into the camera.
“Your father isn’t dead,” she said. “And the first man who tells you to trust him is the first man you shouldn’t.”
The video cut off there.
Fay stared at the black screen.
Griffin’s voice came very quietly.
“That includes me,” he said.
Then Roman’s phone buzzed.
He looked at it and swore under his breath.
“What?” Griffin asked.
Roman lifted his gaze.
“Brandon sent a second message.”
Fay felt ice spread through her.
Roman read it aloud.
“Midnight. Old River Conservatory. The girl comes alone, or the brother gets buried first.”
And somewhere under the fear, a sharper thought pushed through.
Old River Conservatory.
May you like
She knew that name.
Because once, when she was nine, her father had taken her there in winter and told her some flowers only bloomed when people thought the garden was dead.
