Chapter 7 - WHAT MY MOTHER LEFT ME
The doctor stitched and bandaged my back in my father's armored SUV.
I refused pain medication strong enough to cloud my head.
Victor hated that.
“I need you thinking clearly,” he said.
“That's why I'm refusing it.”
“You're bleeding.”
“Less than before.”
“Elena.”
“Dad.”
Daniel closed the vehicle door.
“The police have the building. The wounded guard is stable.”
“And Julian?”
“Gone.”
“Selene?”
“Gone.”
My father rubbed his forehead.
Then I showed him the text.
“Horizon drive,” he read.
“You know what that is?”
“No.”
He looked at me.
Too quickly.
I noticed.
“Dad.”
He looked out the window.
“What aren't you telling me?”
He stayed silent.
I felt something cold move through me.
“You know.”
“I know what it could be.”
“What?”
He sighed.
“Something your mother found.”
My chest tightened.
My mother had died eight years earlier.
Officially, from a brain aneurysm.
She had been brilliant, private, and much tougher than anyone understood.
“What did Mom have to do with Horizon?”
“She invested in one of its predecessor companies.”
“When?”
“Long before you met Julian.”
“And?”
“She became suspicious of the people behind several licensing deals.”
“Julian?”
“No. Voss.”
The senator.
I stared at him.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because your mother asked me not to.”
I laughed once, bitterly.
“Great. Another family secret.”
“She was protecting you.”
“Everyone keeps protecting me by lying to me.”
My father took that without arguing.
Then he reached into his coat and removed an old brass key.
I recognized it immediately.
My mother's jewelry box.
“You kept this?”
“She left instructions.”
“For what?”
“To give it to you if anyone ever asked about Horizon.”
A chill ran through me.
The SUV became completely silent.
I took the key.
“Where's the box?”
“Your childhood home.”
Two hours away.
Daniel shook his head.
“We can't risk moving her that far.”
“I'll go,” Victor said.
“No.”
He looked at me.
I held the key tightly.
“She left it for me.”
“Elena—”
“This stopped being only about Julian when he mentioned Horizon.”
My father leaned back.
He knew he had lost the argument.
“Fine.”
We changed vehicles twice.
At 2:14 a.m., we reached the house where I had grown up.
Nothing had changed.
The porch light.
The white shutters.
My mother's roses.
Victor opened the door.
We went upstairs.
Her jewelry box sat inside a locked cabinet exactly where he'd hidden it.
My hand shook as I inserted the key.
Inside were necklaces, letters, photographs.
And beneath a false bottom—
a black flash drive.
Daniel exhaled.
“There it is.”
I picked it up.
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
Julian spoke.
“Found it, didn't you?”
I looked toward the dark window.
“How do you know where I am?”
Then a red laser dot appeared on my father's chest.
Julian whispered,
May you like
“Because I'm watching.”
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