Chapter 8: The Man at the South Gate
I didn't go alone.
I went with Prescott twenty feet behind me and three of my most trusted security team positioned out of sight along the fence line.
Crosby Vane had spent years watching me.
He knew I wasn't careless.
If he expected me to come without backup, he was either desperate or he wanted me to think he was.
Neither was good.
He was already there when I arrived, standing on the outside of the gate in a dark coat, hands in his pockets.
He looked older than the last time I'd seen him.
Thinner.
The kind of thin that comes from something eating at a person from the inside.
"You look well," he said.
"You look like a man who knows he's out of time."
Something shifted in his expression.
Not quite surprise.
"So you've been busy."
"I have the emails, Crosby."
He was still for a moment.
Then he exhaled slowly, like a man setting something down.
"Genevieve," he said.
"Genevieve."
He looked at the gate between us.
"I want you to understand something.
This was never about the children.
It was always about you.
About what you took from me."
"I dissolved a partnership.
Legally.
With full settlement."
"You took my reputation." His voice hardened.
"You took my access.
Every door I'd built for twenty years — you closed them.
One conversation.
One phone call to the right people and I was finished." He looked at me directly.
"Do you know what that feels like?"
"I know what it feels like to watch my children dying."
His jaw tightened.
"They weren't supposed to—" He stopped.
"Finish that sentence."
"It was supposed to be a pressure campaign.
Enough to bring you to the table.
Enough to make you give back what you took."
"You poisoned six-year-old children as a negotiating strategy."
"Yates said the dosage was controlled.
That they would recover the moment—"
"The moment what?
The moment I gave you what you wanted?" I took a step closer to the gate.
"They are six years old, Crosby.
They asked me if they could d*e together so neither of them would be scared."
He looked away.
"I have the financial records," I said.
"The email chain.
The toxicology report my wife commissioned before you had her k*lled."
"I didn't—" He turned back sharply.
"Genevieve's d*ath was an accident.
I had nothing to do with that."
"Then you won't mind explaining it to the people I've already contacted."
His face changed.
"What people?"
"I made three calls on my way back from the south side this morning.
The first was to my attorney.
The second was to a federal contact who has been interested in your financial activity for some time.
The third was to a journalist who covers medical fraud." I watched his face.
"The USB drive is already in my attorney's hands.
The documents are copied and distributed."
He stared at me.
"You can't—"
"It's already done."
He took a step back from the gate.
His hand came out of his pocket and I saw the phone in it.
"I have leverage you don't know about.
There are people who will—"
"Crosby." My voice was very quiet.
"Look at where you're standing."
He looked.
The fence line.
The cameras.
Prescott visible now, twenty feet back, watching.
The security team no longer bothering to stay out of sight.
"Every word you've said in the last four minutes has been recorded," I said.
"Including the part where you described poisoning my children as a pressure campaign."
The phone dropped to his side.
"What happens now," I said, "is not something you get to negotiate.
You should go home.
Your attorney is going to need time to prepare."
He stood at the gate for a long moment.
His mouth opened once and closed again.
Then he said, very quietly: "I didn't mean for them to suffer."
"I know," I said.
"That's the saddest part.
You told yourself that the whole time."
I turned and walked back toward the house.
May you like
Behind me, I heard his footsteps moving away.
I didn't look back.
