“The Suncoast Territories…”
Gideon spun toward me. His eyes were red.
“You mentioned the Suncoast Territories. What happened to Celia?”
“Didn’t she disappear in the fire?”
It had finally hit him. The thread he should have pulled twenty years ago.
The woman he’d written off as dead hadn’t burned. She’d been sent somewhere worse.
“Disappeared?”
The laugh that came out of me was pure venom.
“Gideon, you’re pathetic. You know that?”
“Did you think she walked out of that fire on her own? That she just vanished into thin air?”
I pointed at Vivian, shaking on the floor.
“It was your precious Vivian.”
“She knew that if my mother woke up, the whole lie would fall apart.”
“The morning after the fire, before the ashes were cold, she paid the smuggler.”
“My mother was burned, unconscious, barely alive. Vivian had her packed into a shipping container like cargo.”
Gideon swayed on his feet like the ground had shifted under him.
He stared at Vivian.
Vivian had her face buried in her hands, shaking her head, mouth open, no sound coming out.
“That’s impossible… she wouldn’t…”
He was still grasping for a version of reality where this wasn’t true.
Right on cue, Evan bypassed the auction house’s AV system.
High-resolution screens flashed to life above the main stage.
Bank transfer records. Twenty years old.
The recipient was a Suncoast smuggler on Interpol’s most-wanted list.
Then came audio. The smuggler’s testimony, recorded after his arrest.
A ragged voice filled the room.
“Yeah, a young woman paid me. Told me to sell a burned woman to the worst mine I could find. Said to make sure she never came back.”
The recording cut out.
No one breathed.
Whatever sympathy the Mercer name had bought was gone.
The eyes in the room had changed. Disgust. Horror.
“Why?”
Gideon crossed the floor in two strides, grabbed Vivian by the throat, and hauled her off the ground.
His eyes were bloodshot. The veins in his neck stood out like cords.
“She was your sister.”
“She gave you everything growing up. Everything.”
“How could you do this to her?”
Vivian gasped under his grip.
She saw the look on his face and knew it was over.
And then she laughed.
Wild, jagged, unhinged laughter.
“Why?”
“Because I hated her.”
“She got to be the real daughter. The golden child. And I was the dirty secret no one was allowed to talk about.”
“She got you. She got everything. And I spent my whole life crawling for scraps.”
She jabbed a finger at Gideon. Her eyes had gone feral.
“And don’t act like you’re innocent, Gideon.”
“In that fire, you had her hand.”
“So why did you let go?”
“Was it because you saw her face? Because a burned woman wasn’t good enough for a Hawthorne?”
Gideon went gray.
He released her. Stumbled backward.
He had let go.
He’d seen what the fire did to her face, and his hand had opened on its own.
One reflex. One second of revulsion. It would eat him alive for the rest of his life.
Sirens cut through the air outside.
Federal agents came through the doors. Armed. Moving fast.
“Vivian Mercer.”
The lead officer held up a warrant.
“You’re under arrest for international human trafficking and attempted murder.”
“Come with us.”
The cuffs locked around her manicured wrists.
She shattered.
“Gideon, save me! Gideon, you can’t leave me!”
“I’m carrying your baby!”
They dragged her toward the exit, screaming and thrashing, and not a single person moved to help.