My father’s face softened.
“I decided for you when you were five and wanted to cross a busy street alone,” he said. “I decided for you when you were twelve and wanted to ride in a snowstorm with a friend who had no business being behind a wheel. I decided for you when you were seventeen and too angry to think clearly after that fight at school—”
“You don’t get to compare this to grounding me.”
“No,” he said, voice heavy with fatigue. “I get to compare it to every terrible choice a parent makes when the alternative might be burying their child.”
The room went silent again.
His eyes were red.
I realized then that he hadn’t simply hidden from us.
He had watched us grieve from hiding.
He had heard the eulogy.
He had known what I said over the grave.
Whatever anger I had, it was now tangled with something more painful.
Understanding.
I hated that.
Because understanding a betrayal does not erase it. It only makes it harder to keep hating.
Patricia cleared her throat gently.
“We have a location,” she said.
We turned.
She pointed at the screen.
An abandoned shipping warehouse on the waterfront. Building records showed it had been empty for years. No active utility account under the listed owner. Ideal for temporary use. Hard to monitor without getting noticed. Easier to secure once inside.
“Traffic footage places the SUV entering the property forty-six minutes ago,” she said. “No visual on it leaving.”
“She’s there,” my father said.
Patricia nodded.
He straightened as if some private decision had just completed itself inside him.
“Then I go in.”
“No,” I said instantly.
He looked at me.
“This ends one way or another tonight.”
“Then the FBI goes in.”
“They will. But Crane wants me.”
“That doesn’t mean you hand yourself over.”
My father turned back to the warehouse image.
“You don’t understand him.”
“Then help me.”
He was quiet for several seconds.
“When I wore a wire,” he said, “I spent hundreds of hours listening to Victor Crane talk when he thought he was safe. I learned his rhythms. His ego. His idea of justice. He doesn’t want a firefight. He doesn’t want a clean arrest. He wants theater. He wants confession, fear, humiliation. He wants me standing in front of him, acknowledging what I cost him.”
Patricia added, “And that need can be used.”
I looked between them. “Used how?”
“To hold his attention,” she said. “To keep him from moving your mother or killing her quickly. To give the team time to position for a breach.”
My father nodded once. “I go in first. Unarmed. I offer myself. I keep him talking.”
“No.”
This time the word came out harsher.
“No. Absolutely not.”
My father looked at me with an expression that was almost sad. “Julian—”
“No. You’ve lied to us for twenty-eight years, let us bury you, brought a kidnapping down on this family, and now you want to stroll into a warehouse so a psychopath can monologue at you while armed men stand around? No.”
A flicker of pride crossed his face.
It made me even angrier.
“You sound like your mother,” he said.
“Good.”
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