Chapter 27 The Last Piece of Family
The silence stretched for one more unbearable second.
Then Pierce said it.
"Alfred."
The word landed like something physical. Elena felt it in her chest, in her stomach, in the tips of her fingers still resting on the counter behind her.
She didn't move. Didn't speak. Just stood there while the name settled over her like something cold and heavy.
Pierce watched her carefully, like he was waiting for her to break.
"That doesn't make sense," Elena said finally, her voice surprisingly steady. "He's my father's brother. He was at the funeral. He..." She stopped.
Because even as the words came out, the pieces where beginning to fit in her head.
The legal letters, arriving like clockwork every six months for three years. The contract worth two hundred million, secured quietly, used as leverage before she even knew it existed. The way Alfred had looked at her across that desk, not like a niece. Like a problem.
"He was there," she said again, but quieter this time. Almost to herself. "He was there at the funeral."
"I know." Pierce's voice was careful.
"How long?" Elena looked at him. "How long has he been planning this?"
Pierce crossed the kitchen slowly and pulled out a chair from the table. He sat down, leaning forward, elbows on his knees.
"Marcus found the first contact with the contractor eight months ago," he said. "Right around the time the government contract negotiations started."
Eight months.
"He's been watching you that long," Pierce continued. "The contractor was tracking your routine, your schedule, waiting for the right moment when it wouldn't raise questions." He paused. "The sniper two nights ago wasn't Rodrigo."
Elena's breath caught. "What?"
"The shot came from across the street. Rodrigo's men were the ones Derek neutralized outside, but the sniper.." Pierce's jaw tightened. "That was Alfred's contractor."
The room tilted slightly.
Elena reached back and gripped the counter edge, steadying herself. Her mind was doing the math without her permission, the shot, the angle, where she'd been standing. Right there. She'd been standing right there and if Pierce hadn't moved...
"He tried to kill me," she said, the reality of it spoken aloud for the first time.
"Yes."
She laughed.
It came out short and hollow and a little unhinged, escaping before she could stop it. "He was at my parents' funeral," she said again, the words tasting strange now. "He hugged me. He cried. He told me I was the only family he had left." Another broken sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "The only family he had left."
And there it was.
The fact that while she'd been standing at her parents' grave, orphaned and terrified and completely alone, her uncle had been calculating, planning, deciding she was replaceable.
Her father's brother.
The last living piece of her father's family.
And he had wanted her dead.
Pierce didn't say anything. Didn't try to fill the silence with empty words or hollow reassurances. He just stayed where he was, close enough that she could feel his presence.
She was grateful for that. More grateful than she could explain.
"Okay," Elena said after a long moment, her voice quieter now. Steadier in the way things go steady right after they break. "What happens now?"
"I handle it."
"Handle it how?"
Pierce met her eyes. "The way I handle things."
Elena looked at him for a long moment. She knew what that meant. Had always known, on some level, what it meant to have a man like Pierce in her corner.
"Don't hurt him," she said.
Pierce's expression shifted. "Elena..."
"I mean it." Her voice cracked slightly on the last word. "He's still my father's brother. Whatever he is, whatever he's done...he's still the last piece of my father's family that exists in the world." She pressed her lips together. "Just make him stop. Make him go away and leave me alone. But don't..." She stopped. Took a breath. "Don't hurt him."
Pierce studied her face for what felt like a long time. Something moved through his expression, something complicated that she didn't have the energy to learn right now.
"Okay," he said quietly.
Elena held his gaze. "Do you mean that?"
"I mean it."
She didn't fully believe him. And by the way his eyes held hers without flinching, he knew she didn't.
But she let it go, because she was so tired. Tired in a way that went deeper than not sleeping, deeper than the physical exhaustion of the last few days. Tired in her bones, in the place where hope lived.
She moved to the couch on unsteady legs and sat down.
The afternoon light came through the gaps in the plywood, cutting pale stripes across the floor. Darrel jumped up beside her immediately, pressing his warm weight against her thigh like he could sense something was wrong. Elena put her hand on his back without thinking.
Pierce moved to the chair across from her. He didn't open his laptop. Didn't look at his phone. Just sat there in the same heavy quiet.
The silence stretched between them, but it wasn't uncomfortable. It was the silence of two people who had run out of words, sitting with the weight of something too large to speak around.
"You knew all morning," Elena said finally.
"Yeah." He said quietly.
She looked at him. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"
Pierce was quiet for a moment, his eyes on the middle distance. "Because once I said it out loud, I couldn't take it back." He said finally, and looked at her then. "You were fine this morning. Making coffee. Feeding the cats. You looked..." He stopped. "I didn't want to take that from you before I had to."
Elena stared at him.
She'd expected strategy. Expected some calculated answer about needing more information, needing to confirm the facts, needing to be sure.
Not that.
Something shifted in her chest, slow and irreversible, like a door she'd been holding shut finally giving way.
She didn't say anything. Didn't know what to say. She just looked at Pierce across the small space of her living room and saw him, and felt something she wasn't ready to name settle quietly into the space behind her ribs.
At some point the light changed. The pale afternoon stripes on the floor turned golden, then faded. Elena didn't remember closing her eyes.
She just slipped under, slow and quiet, Darrel still warm against her legs, the sounds of the apartment gentle around her. The exhaustion of the last twenty-four hours pulling her down before she could think to resist it.
She didn't dream.
Pierce watched her go still.
The tension left her face when she slept, smoothing out the lines that worry and grief had carved there all day. She looked younger. Less like someone who'd spent the last few weeks surviving impossible things.
He got up quietly, pulled the blanket from the back of the couch, and draped it over her. She didn't wake.
Pierce stood there for a moment, just looking at her.
Then he walked to the hallway, pulled out his phone, and dialed.
Marcus picked up on the second ring.
"Where is he?" Pierce's voice was barely above a murmur, low and completely flat.
"Penthouse. North side. He's alone."
"Good." Pierce glanced back at the living room, at the shape of Elena sleeping beneath the blanket, at the boarded-up window above her head. The window her uncle's hired shooter had put a bullet through two nights ago while she'd been standing three feet away.
His jaw tightened.
"Handle Alfred tonight." A pause, cold and precise. "Make sure he understands what happens if he ever comes near her again."
He hung up before Marcus could respond.
Pierce leaned against the hallway wall, eyes back on Elena. She shifted slightly in her sleep, pulling the blanket closer, and the movement did something to his chest that he didn't have words for.
She'd said don't hurt him.
And he'd said okay.
He'd meant it, mostly.
But Alfred had put a bullet through her window.
And Pierce Diego had never been very good at mercy.