Chapter 4 - THE PRICE OF A DAUGHTER
My father arrived forty minutes later.
I was waiting in Nico’s library.
Not sitting.
Waiting.
There is a difference.
Sitting implies patience.
I had none left.
When James Hart entered, he looked at Nico first.
That told me everything.
“What happened?” my father asked.
“A man inside Nico’s security team took money from whoever is threatening me.”
My father went pale.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
He stepped toward me.
I stepped back.
“Don’t.”
His face tightened.
“Evie.”
“What did you trade?”
Silence.
Behind me, Nico stood near the fireplace.
I didn’t look at him.
If I did, I might ask why he had let my father walk into the room without warning me.
Again.
“What did you trade?” I repeated.
My father looked at Nico.
“Leave us alone.”
Nico’s voice was calm.
“No.”
“This is between me and my daughter.”
“She’s my wife.”
The room changed.
My father’s mouth hardened.
“You’ve known her four days.”
“And yet somehow I’ve managed not to lie to her as much as you have.”
That should have pleased me.
It didn’t.
Because Nico had secrets too.
“Both of you stop talking about me like I’m furniture.”
They looked at me.
“Dad.”
My voice shook once.
I hated that.
“The man downstairs said you traded someone. Who?”
My father sat down.
Just like that.
As if his knees had stopped working.
My heart began beating harder.
“Two years ago,” he said, “there was a subcontractor on the Red Hook project.”
Nico swore quietly.
I turned.
“You know this story.”
“Yes.”
“Then let him finish.”
My father rubbed his hands over his face.
“His name was Michael Rowan.”
I knew the name.
Not personally.
From the news.
A project manager who had disappeared in 2024.
His abandoned car had been found near Brooklyn Bridge Park. Police suspected foul play, but no body had ever been recovered.
“He worked for you,” I said.
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“He discovered that one of the investment groups was using shell companies to move money through our development.”
“The Petrov group.”
My father stared.
“Nicholas told you?”
“Yes. Continue.”
“Michael copied documents.”
“Evidence.”
“Yes.”
“Of money laundering?”
“Among other things.”
Nico shifted behind me.
I heard it.
My father continued.
“He came to me because he thought I could help him.”
“Could you?”
“I tried.”
Something in his voice made anger rise in my throat.
“What did you do?”
“I arranged for him to leave New York.”
I stared at him.
“You hid him?”
“For three days.”
“And then?”
My father looked down.
“They found him.”
The room became quiet.
“Did they kill him?”
“We believe so.”
“We?”
“Nico’s father and I.”
I looked toward Nico.
He said nothing.
“And the evidence?” I asked.
“Michael gave me a drive before he disappeared.”
There it was.
The thing my father had taken.
“You still have it.”
He didn’t answer.
“Dad.”
“No.”
I laughed.
“You are unbelievably bad at lying when you’re scared.”
“Evelyn—”
“You still have it.”
His shoulders lowered.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Insurance.”
The word made something inside me break.
“Insurance?”
“If I turned it over, I lost leverage.”
“A man died.”
“And if I released the information carelessly, more people could have died.”
“That sounds like something a coward says after he decides money matters more.”
My father stood.
“You don’t understand the position I was in.”
“You’re right. I’ve never had to decide whether a murder victim was more useful as evidence or as a bargaining chip.”
“Enough.”
“No.”
My voice rose.
“You threatened to take away my apartment and tuition if I didn’t marry him. You made me think this was some debt you couldn’t pay. But this is because you kept evidence from federal investigators.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It actually is.”
Nico spoke.
“The drive implicates people beyond Petrov.”
I turned on him.
“You knew.”
“I knew the drive existed.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“It wasn’t mine to tell.”
I laughed, sharp and bitter.
“Interesting moral boundary.”
His face tightened.
My father stepped between us.
“The marriage was meant to stabilize the situation.”
“How?”
Neither man answered.
I looked from one to the other.
Then I understood.
“Nico wants the drive.”
My father’s jaw flexed.
I looked at my husband.
“That’s why you agreed to marry me.”
“No.”
“But it’s part of it.”
He didn’t answer quickly enough.
My chest tightened.
“You married me for evidence.”
“I married you because your father’s choices put you in danger.”
“And the drive?”
“I need it.”
There it was.
Simple.
Clean.
Brutal.
“Why?”
Nico’s face changed.
“My father was investigating the same network before he died.”
I went still.
“The heart attack.”
“Wasn’t a heart attack.”
My father closed his eyes.
Nico’s voice stayed controlled.
“My father was poisoned.”
I stared at him.
“I’m sorry.”
He looked away.
It was the first time I saw grief in him.
Not the dramatic kind.
The older kind.
The kind that had been forced into useful shapes.
“The drive may identify who ordered it,” he said.
My anger shifted, confused by sympathy I did not want.
“And my father has been sitting on it for two years.”
“Yes.”
I looked at James.
“Did you know?”
“I suspected.”
“Did you tell Nico?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“After Vittorio died.”
“And still you kept the drive.”
“I told you. It’s leverage.”
I couldn’t look at him anymore.
I walked to the window.
The city outside was gray with rain.
Twenty-two years of being his daughter, and suddenly I didn’t know who he was.
Maybe I never had.
Behind me, my father said, “I agreed to give Nicholas access to the files in exchange for your protection.”
I turned slowly.
“Access.”
“Yes.”
“What does that mean?”
Nico answered.
“It means I get a copy of the drive.”
“And then?”
“I verify the information.”
“And then?”
“We decide what can be turned over safely.”
I stared at him.
“You both think you get to decide whether murder evidence goes to law enforcement.”
My father’s voice hardened.
“You don’t understand what’s on that drive.”
“Then show me.”
“No.”
I laughed.
“Of course.”
I grabbed my phone from the table.
Nico moved.
“Where are you going?”
“To my room.”
“Evelyn.”
“I am one lie away from throwing something heavy, and your library has too many antique objects.”
I walked out.
He followed.
I reached the stairs before he caught up.
“Stop.”
I spun around.
“You knew your father may have been murdered and you still sat across from me at dinner making jokes.”
“What did you want me to do?”
“Tell me why you were really marrying me.”
“I told you I needed an alliance.”
“You needed evidence.”
“I needed both.”
“That matters.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
His jaw tightened.
“I didn’t choose the threat against you.”
“No. You just found a way to benefit from it.”
The words landed.
He went very still.
I regretted them immediately.
I refused to take them back.
Nico looked at me for a long moment.
Then said quietly, “You’re right.”
That stopped me.
“I am?”
“Yes.”
He leaned one hand on the banister.
“I needed the drive. Your father needed protection. Marriage gave him a reason to give me access without looking weak to his investors, and it made your safety my problem in a way everyone would understand.”
“My safety was already your problem?”
“No.”
“At least that’s honest.”
His eyes darkened.
“It became my problem before the wedding.”
“What does that mean?”
He looked away.
“Nothing.”
“Nico.”
He walked past me.
“Nico.”
He stopped at the bottom of the stairs.
I waited.
Finally he said, “Tuesday night, after we found the man outside your apartment, I saw the surveillance photographs he had taken.”
My stomach tightened.
“So?”
“One was of you helping an old man carry groceries up the steps.”
I stared.
He continued, almost annoyed by the memory.
“Another was you asleep in the library with your face on a constitutional law book.”
Heat rushed into my cheeks.
“Wonderful.”
“Another was you giving your umbrella to a woman with two children and walking home in the rain.”
I said nothing.
He looked up at me.
“They’d been watching you for days. All they had learned was that the person in the newspapers didn’t exist.”
My anger lost its footing.
“Nico—”
“I was already going to protect you.”
The words sat between us.
Then my father’s phone rang in the library.
A second later, he shouted.
“Nicholas!”
Everything changed.
Nico ran back.
I followed.
My father stood with his phone in one hand, face white.
“What?”
He held out the screen.
A video was playing.
Paige.
My roommate.
Sitting in a chair in a dark room.
Her wrists were tied.
Someone stood behind the camera.
A distorted voice spoke.
“James Hart has twenty-four hours.”
The camera moved closer to Paige’s terrified face.
“Bring the drive.”
My blood turned to ice.
The voice continued.
“Or the daughter loses her friend.”
The video ended.
For one second, nobody moved.
Then I looked at Nico.
“You put security on her.”
“I did.”
“Where are they?”
He was already calling.
Carlo answered immediately.
Nico listened.
His face hardened.
“When?”
A pause.
“How many?”
Another.
He ended the call.
I couldn’t feel my hands.
“What happened?”
“The guard following Paige was hit by a car outside her boyfriend’s building.”
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
“And Paige?”
Nico looked at me.
“Gone.”
My father started talking.
“We give them the drive.”
Nico turned.
“No.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“They kill her if we hand it over.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know men like Petrov.”
“That’s my best friend.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
I stepped toward him.
“You don’t get to turn her into acceptable collateral because you want revenge for your father.”
Pain flashed in his eyes.
Good.
Let it.
“I’m going to get her back.”
“How?”
“By finding where they took her.”
“In twenty-four hours?”
“Yes.”
“You sound very confident.”
“I have to be.”
I looked at my father.
He was shaking.
I had never hated him more.
“This happened because of you.”
“I know.”
“Then give me the drive.”
Both men answered at once.
“No.”
I laughed.
There it was again.
Men deciding what I could know.
My friend tied to a chair.
My life traded across polished tables.
My marriage negotiated like a merger.
Something inside me went very calm.
“Fine.”
I turned toward the door.
Nico caught my wrist.
“Where are you going?”
“To find Paige.”
“You’re not leaving this house.”
I looked down at his hand.
Then at him.
“You keep confusing wife with prisoner.”
“And you keep confusing courage with walking into danger.”
“I know Paige better than either of you.”
“That doesn’t help us find her.”
“Yes, it does.”
He paused.
I pulled my hand free.
“She was wearing a Columbia sweatshirt in the video.”
“So?”
“Paige hates Columbia sweatshirts. Says they make her look like a tourist. She only owns one.”
Nico’s focus sharpened.
“The gray one?”
I stared.
“You investigated her too?”
“Yes.”
“Creepy later. Useful now.”
I replayed the video.
The sweatshirt was gray.
There was a dark stain on one sleeve.
Paint.
Blue paint.
I knew exactly where it came from.
Paige had helped her boyfriend repaint his studio the week before.
She had left the sweatshirt there.
My heart started pounding.
“She wasn’t kidnapped outside his building.”
“What?”
“She changed there. That sweatshirt was at his studio.”
Nico stepped closer.
“Where is the studio?”
“Red Hook.”
My father went pale.
Nico looked at him.
“Near the development site.”
May you like
I nodded.
And suddenly the twenty-four hours felt much shorter.
