Chapter 113 #31: So What Now?
I stare at the ledger like it might speak, like the pages might rearrange themselves into an explanation that makes sense. They don’t. David stands beside me with his eyes fixed on the book as though it’s a live grenade.
“Vincent had it,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. “All this time.”
David reaches out, touches the edge of the cover with one finger, then pulls back like it burned him but says nothing.
I keep the will aside and set the ledger on the desk. My fingers tremble when I open it. The first page is Malcolm’s tight, slanted handwriting: dates, amounts, names. Favours owed. Debts collected. Power mapped out in ink and numbers. I recognize some of the handwriting from old letters he sent me when I was small, before I understood what he really was.
“How long?” I ask the room more than David. “How long has he been playing me?”
David exhales slowly. “I had a feeling something was off from the moment he pointed that gun at us. He was way too steady with it.”
I close my eyes for a second, remembering the way Vincent stood in the hallway with his arm extended as he pointed that gun at us. His finger rested on that trigger with too much ease for someone who just happened to have picked it up after an intruder broke in. At the time, I thought it was rage making him calm. Now I see it for what it was: training.
“And the tails,” I continue as the pieces click together in my head. “I always wondered how they seemed to know my routes and schedule. They knew when Lucy was at school, when we went to the park or even when we went for just a cup of coffee. At first, I just thought they had planted a tracker on me or something but now...”
David nods. “Because Vincent told them.”
My mind plays back every memory I have of the last five years. The way he always knew where I was without me telling him. The way he’d text me right when I was leaving a meeting, asking if I needed anything on my way home. The way he suggested we take Lucy to the park that exact Saturday morning when I later realized Shadow’s man had been watching from across the street.
“When he married me, the idea was so he’d have insider information of the day to day of Reid Global since he was taking it over. But now I see he most likely just needed a way to get close,” I say. “To wait until I led him to the ledger. Or until I trusted him enough to stop looking over my shoulder.”
“And now he has our daughter,” David says as his hands ball into fists.
I look down at the ledger again. “Vincent has Lucy. Shadow has Lucy.”
The name feels wrong in my mouth, too small for the monster it belongs to. Vincent has been nothing but the perfect father to Lucy. The man who carried her on his shoulders at Disneyland, who read her dragon books in funny voices, who kissed me goodnight every night for years. But he's also the same man who pulled a gun on David. The same man who walked out of this apartment tonight with my daughter in his arms.
I sink into the desk chair. My legs won’t hold me anymore.
David drops to a crouch in front of me placing his hands on my knees. “We’ll get her back, Nora.”
For a while, I don’t reply, but a thought hits me.
“One thing I don’t quite understand though,” I say furrowing my brow. “If he already had the ledger all along, then why the threats? Why take Lucy at all?”
Before David can answer, my phone buzzes on the desk. Sel’s name lights the screen.
I answer on speaker.
“Nora.” Her voice is tight. “I just got home from the salon and Marcus told me everything. Apparently, David called. Where are you?”
The sound of Sel's voice makes my eyes sting with tears. I have to swallow hard to push them down.
“Home,” I manage. “Vincent took her, Selena. He took my child. Lucy’s gone.”
A brief pause, then Sel exhales deeply. “We’ll be on the next flight out. Wheels up in ninety minutes. We’ll be there by dawn.”
“You don’t have to–”
“Shut the hell up. We’re coming. Marcus is already pulling strings with old contacts. We’ll find her.”
I close my eyes. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. Just stay alive until we land.”
The call ends.
David stands. “I’m calling Maya. She has people in the city. She can run a search grid faster than the police.”
I nod. He steps into the hallway to make the call.
I stay where I am, staring at the ledger. The pages feel heavier than they should. Every name in here is a life Malcolm ended, ruined or controlled. Every entry is blood money. And Vincent wanted it enough to marry me. Enough to father my child. Enough to take her when I finally pushed him too far.
David returns a few minutes later. “Maya’s mobilizing a full sweep. She’ll have a report by morning.”
I look up at him, swallowing another lump. “Stay.”
He doesn’t hesitate. “I wasn't planning on going anywhere.”
We don’t sleep. We sit on the living room floor instead with our backs against the couch and a pot of coffee going cold on the table. Every hour I check Lucy’s room again, as if she might have wandered back while I wasn’t looking. Every hour the emptiness hurts more.
The morning seems so far away but eventually, it comes.
At seven I call the police again and Officer Martinez answers this time. I tell him Vincent didn’t bring her home and that I’d like to file kidnapping charges against him.
“We’ll upgrade the report,” he says when I finish. “We’ll treat it as a custodial interference case with possible endangerment. I’ll have officers canvass the neighbourhood, check traffic cams around the building. But Mrs. Calder, if he’s the father and there’s no custody order restricting him–”
“I’m getting sick and fucking tired of hearing you all say that crap!” I snap. “I know my husband. I’m the one living with the man. So if I tell you something’s off with the way he was acting last night, then something was fucking off!”
By the end of the sentence, my voice is raised much higher than I’d have liked, but hearing them belittle the situation was getting too much for me to handle.
There's a brief silence on the end of the line before Officer Martinez clears his throat. “We’ll do everything we can ma'am. Sit tight. We’ll be in touch.”
I hang up. My hands are shaking again.
David takes the phone from me gently. “They’ll move slower than we need. We need to go faster.”
“So what now?”
“We wait for Maya’s report. We wait for Sel and Marcus. And we keep looking.”
The day drags. No word from Vincent. No text. No call. Nothing.
Maya calls at noon. “We’ve got movement on three different cameras. Vincent’s car heading south on the FDR at 1:17 a.m. Last sighting near the Battery Tunnel. After that, nothing. He could’ve switched vehicles. He could’ve gone underground. My people are checking parking garages, toll records, private lots. It’s a lot of ground.”
David thanks her and hangs up. I feel the panic begin to rise again, but I don’t cry. I can’t. Tears would mean giving up and I won’t give up.
The doorbell rings at ten past nine.
David stands to check the peephole, but before he can even tell me who it is, the door pushes open with the force of a tiny angry woman.
“Who the hell dared take my niece?!” Sel says while barging in.
She proceeds to throw her arms around me. I breathe into her hair and the comfort of having my best friend around again.
“We’re here,” Sel says against my hair. “We’re here now.”
I hear David talking to Marcus just behind us. “We just found out the elusive Shadow has been Vincent all along. And he has my kid.”
I pull away from Sel just in time to see Marcus’s expression change to brief surprise.
“Your kid?” he asks carefully. Sel too is staring at me wide eyed.
“It’s a long story,” I say, “I’ll tell you guys everything soon enough. But for now, I need us to figure out a way to get Lucy back.”
“You’re right. Sorry.” Sel says, her expression turning serious. “Now, tell us everything from the beginning.”