Chapter 4 - LIGHTS OUT
I caught Daniel before he hit the floor.
“Daniel!”
People screamed around us.
Tables crashed.
Someone shouted for everybody to get down.
I dragged Daniel behind the stone bar and pressed my hand over his chest.
No blood.
No wound.
He stared at me.
“I’m okay.”
“You fell.”
“You pulled me down.”
I had.
Pure reflex.
The bullet had struck a chandelier above us.
Glass rained across the floor.
Another shot hit the stage.
Chief Reed shouted, “Eastern balcony!”
I looked up.
A shadow moved behind the glass above the dance floor.
I ran.
Daniel grabbed my wrist.
“Elena!”
“Stay down!”
I crossed the kitchen, shoved through the staff corridor, and hit the service stairs two at a time.
My ribs burned.
Old injury.
Old reminder.
I ignored it.
At the top, the balcony door was open.
Wind whipped the curtains.
A man in black disappeared around the corner.
I followed him onto the roof deck.
He fired.
The shot hit the railing beside me.
I dropped, rolled behind a planter, and heard footsteps moving toward the maintenance stairs.
I chased him.
He reached the landing.
Then froze.
Detective Mason was coming up from below.
The gunman spun back toward me.
I saw his face.
And everything inside me stopped.
“No.”
He smiled.
“Elena.”
Thomas Cross.
My older brother.
The brother I had buried seven years earlier.
The brother whose burned car had been pulled from the river after the corruption case.
My brother raised his gun.
“Still protecting the wrong people.”
My hands went cold.
“Tom?”
Mason shouted below us.
“Drop the weapon!”
Tom backed toward the roof edge.
“You should’ve stayed gone.”
“Why are you working for Vanessa?”
His smile disappeared.
“You still think Vanessa is running this?”
A helicopter passed offshore, its lights sweeping across his face.
He looked older.
Harder.
But it was him.
Absolutely him.
“Who are you working for?”
Tom laughed softly.
“You married him.”
My pulse kicked.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
Then he jumped over the railing.
I rushed forward.
A maintenance canopy broke his fall.
He rolled across it, dropped to the lower terrace, and vanished into the crowd below.
Mason reached me.
“Who was that?”
I couldn’t answer.
Because if Tom was telling the truth, then the entire investigation had just changed.
I ran back downstairs.
Daniel was standing beside Chief Reed.
Alive.
Confused.
Terrified.
I looked at my husband.
The man I had trusted enough to marry.
The heir to Vale Holdings.
The man whose family money sat at the center of forty-two million missing dollars.
Daniel came toward me.
“Elena, who was shooting at us?”
I stared into his eyes.
And for the first time since our wedding, I wondered if I actually knew him.
“My brother.”
Daniel went pale.
“Your brother is dead.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Then Chief Reed’s phone rang.
He listened.
His face hardened.
“Elena.”
“What?”
“They found Sloan’s Escalade.”
“Where?”
Reed looked directly at Daniel.
May you like
“Outside your house.”
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