Chapter 98: Staten Island

Amelia's POV

Grayson said no immediately.

Not loudly, not dramatically, just a flat clean no that left no room for discussion, and he looked at Morrison and said, "Find another way in," and Morrison looked back at him with the expression of a man who understood the instinct completely and also needed to deliver some practical reality.

"She won't negotiate with anyone else," Morrison said. "We've tried. She won't come to the door, she won't speak on the phone to my people, she won't respond to anything except a direct message saying Amelia is coming." He paused. "She's been in that house for six hours. We don't know her state of mind, we don't know Thomas's condition, and we cannot move on the property without risking both of them."

The kitchen went very quiet.

I looked at Grayson and he was looking at Morrison and his jaw was tight and I could see the exact calculation happening behind his eyes, the one where every instinct he had was fighting every practical fact in front of him and the practical facts were winning which was making him furious.

"I'll go," I said.

"No," Grayson said, still looking at Morrison.

"Grayson," I said, and something in my voice made him look at me finally. "She wants to talk. That's what this is. She's not going to hurt me because hurting me ends everything for her and she knows it." I held his eyes. "She wants to be heard. That's all she's ever wanted."

"You don't know that," he said.

"I know it the same way I knew walking into that Midtown office," I said. "And I was right then."

He stared at me and I could see the war of it on his face and I didn't push, I just let him work through it because pushing Grayson never helped and he needed to get there himself.

"I go with her to the door," Marcus said from the corner of the room. "I stay outside within sight of the window. Morrison's people on both sides of the property. The second anything feels wrong she walks out."

"And if she can't walk out," Grayson said, and his voice was low.

"Then we go in," Morrison said simply. "But I don't believe it comes to that."

Grayson looked at me one more time and the look was long and said a dozen things he wasn't going to say out loud in front of Morrison and Marcus and I held it steadily and hoped he could read everything I was saying back without words, that I was scared too and that I was doing it anyway because this was the only way it ended today.

"Fine," he said. And then immediately: "I'm driving."

\---

The house in Staten Island was ordinary, a regular residential street, the kind where people had small gardens and parked in front of their own driveways, and the police presence had been deliberately kept back far enough that it didn't look like a siege from the outside, just a quiet morning with a few cars parked too carefully and a stillness that wasn't quite natural if you knew what to look for.

I got out of the car and Grayson got out too and he walked me to the front path and stopped there and looked at me and I could see he was trying to find words that were large enough for the moment and not finding them and I loved him for trying anyway.

"Five minutes," I said. "If I'm not out in twenty you come in."

"Ten," he said.

"Fifteen," I said.

He pulled me in briefly, hard, and then let go and stepped back and I turned and walked up the path and knocked on the front door.

It opened almost immediately like she'd been standing right behind it, and Victoria looked different from every other time I'd seen her, no blazer, no careful composure, just a woman in her fifties who hadn't slept and had run out of road and knew it, and she stepped back and let me in without speaking.

The hallway was dim and the house smelled like someone had been living in it without opening windows and she led me through to a back sitting room where Thomas was in an armchair with his wrists zip-tied to the arms, awake, his face tired but intact, and when he saw me something moved through his eyes that I didn't have words for, not relief exactly, more like recognition, like a person seeing the thing they'd been holding on for.

"He's fine," Victoria said, from the doorway, and her voice had lost that polished quality it always had, it was flatter now, more tired. "I haven't hurt him."

"I can see that," I said, looking at Thomas and then back at her. "Can you take those off."

She looked at the zip ties and then back at me and for a moment I thought she'd refuse, but she went to a side table and came back with scissors and cut them, and Thomas rubbed his wrists slowly and said nothing.

Victoria sat in the chair across from the one she'd pushed toward me and I sat down and she folded her hands in her lap and looked at me like she was trying to figure out where to start.

"You found the storage unit," she said.

"Yes," I said.

"And the recording."

"Yes."

She nodded slowly, like she'd been expecting it and had made peace with it in the hours between finding out and this moment. "Then it's over," she said, and it wasn't a question, it was just a statement of fact being said out loud for the first time.

"Yes," I said quietly. "It's over."

She was quiet for a long moment and I waited because I understood without being told that she'd asked me here because she needed to say something to someone and she'd chosen me for a reason I was only just beginning to understand.

"Your mother knew about Isabelle," she said finally, and her voice changed completely when she said the name, dropped all the way down to something raw and unguarded. "My daughter. She was the only person who ever..." she stopped and pressed her lips together. "She called me once. Years ago. She said she was sorry. That's all. Just that she was sorry. Nobody else ever said that."

I looked at Victoria Cross and I thought about my mother making that call, finding that number, saying those words to a woman the world had decided was a villain, and I thought about how completely like her that was, to see the grief underneath the monster and acknowledge it even when it cost her nothing and changed nothing and she did it anyway because it was the right thing.

"She meant it," I said.

Victoria looked at me and her eyes were bright and she blinked and looked away toward the window and said nothing for a moment and when she looked back something had settled in her face.

"I know," she said. "That's why I asked for you."

She stood up and walked to the hallway and opened the front door herself and called out to Morrison that she was coming out, and I sat in that sitting room with my father who was rubbing his wrists and watching me with those complicated eyes, and outside I could already hear footsteps on the path and Grayson's voice, low and fast, asking Marcus if I was okay.

"She's okay," Marcus said.

And I was.