Chapter 2 - The Price of a Favor
I changed clothes in less than two minutes.
The blue gown stayed on the conference-room table.
I did not fold it.
I did not put it back into its tissue paper.
For some reason, that felt important.
When I stepped into the hallway, Gideon was inside his office, his door still open.
He looked up immediately.
“I need to leave.”
He was already standing before I finished.
“What happened?”
“My brother called.”
“What did Pemberton do?”
The question made me stop.
Not what happened.
Not is Kyle okay.
What did Pemberton do?
“You expected this.”
Gideon came around his desk.
“Emery.”
“Did you know he was going after Kyle?”
“I knew there was a possibility.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t have proof.”
“You had enough proof to tell me not to marry him.”
His mouth tightened.
“Yes.”
I grabbed my purse.
“I’ll handle it.”
“No.”
“Gideon.”
“You’re upset.”
“My brother is being threatened.”
“Exactly.”
“I don’t need a bodyguard.”
“You might.”
I froze.
He walked past me, collected his coat, and spoke to nobody in particular.
“Rafe.”
A man appeared from a doorway I had assumed led to a supply closet.
Rafe Calder was Gideon’s head of security.
Six foot three.
Former Marine.
The kind of person who could make a room nervous while standing perfectly still.
“Car,” Gideon said.
Rafe nodded once.
No questions.
I stared.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
Gideon pressed the elevator button.
“You can take a cab and spend forty minutes wondering whether your brother is safe, or you can get in my car and be there in twelve.”
I hated that he was right.
Twelve minutes later, Gideon’s black sedan was cutting through downtown traffic.
I sat beside him in the back.
Neither of us spoke until we were three blocks from Kyle’s laboratory.
Then Gideon said, “Pemberton’s people have been looking at Nash Bio for months.”
I turned sharply.
“Why?”
“Your brother’s research has military applications.”
“No. It’s targeted cancer delivery.”
“It’s both.”
I knew enough about Kyle’s work to understand that drug-delivery platforms could sometimes be adapted for other purposes.
But Kyle would never—
“He doesn’t know,” Gideon added.
That was somehow worse.
“What does Alister want?”
“Control.”
“Of Kyle?”
“Of the company. Of the patents. Of what they could become.”
I looked out the window.
“And marrying me gives him that?”
“Not legally.”
“Then why?”
“Access. Influence. Leverage.”
My stomach turned.
“He paid Kyle’s debt before he proposed.”
“Yes.”
“You knew?”
“Not at first.”
“When?”
“Eight months ago.”
I faced him.
“We got engaged seven months ago.”
“Yes.”
The anger rose instantly.
“You let me walk around wearing his ring for seven months.”
“I had suspicions, Emery. Not evidence.”
“You could have told me.”
“And said what? Your fiancé may have engineered your brother’s financial rescue so he could gain leverage over both of you?”
“Yes!”
“You would have believed him when he called me jealous.”
I opened my mouth.
Closed it.
Because he was right.
Alister would have smiled.
He would have said Gideon was threatened by the Pemberton name.
By politics.
By respectability.
He would have reminded me that Gideon’s reputation was hardly spotless.
And I probably would have believed him.
The sedan stopped outside Kyle’s lab.
A black SUV was already parked there.
Gideon saw it.
“Stay in the car.”
“No.”
“Emery.”
“My brother is inside.”
He stared at me.
I stared back.
Finally he said, “Stay beside me.”
The laboratory occupied the third floor of a converted manufacturing building.
When we reached it, Kyle was standing beside a stainless-steel workbench.
Alister stood across from him.
Two men in suits waited near the door.
Kyle looked relieved when he saw me.
Alister looked furious when he saw Gideon.
“Emery.”
His voice was calm.
Too calm.
“What are you doing here?”
“My brother called me.”
“You brought Ferris?”
“I brought myself.”
Gideon said nothing.
He did not need to.
Alister’s eyes flicked to him.
“You’re interfering in a private family matter.”
Gideon finally spoke.
“Then stop bringing employees with concealed weapons to private family matters.”
One of Alister’s men shifted.
Rafe, standing behind us, smiled without humor.
Alister looked at me.
“This is unnecessary.”
“What do you want from Kyle?”
“A business conversation.”
Kyle laughed bitterly.
“He wants thirty percent of the company.”
My stomach dropped.
“For what?”
Alister straightened his cuff.
“For the capital support I provided.”
“You paid personal liabilities.”
“In exchange for future consideration.”
“No,” Kyle said.
“There was no equity agreement.”
Alister’s gaze sharpened.
“There were conversations.”
“There was nothing signed.”
“Details.”
I stared at the man I was supposed to marry.
“You told me you helped him because you cared about me.”
“I did.”
“Then why are you asking for his company?”
“I’m asking him to recognize the reality of his position.”
Kyle stepped forward.
“My position is that my sister is marrying the man who bought my debt so he could use me.”
“Careful.”
Alister’s voice changed.
The warmth disappeared.
In five years with Gideon, I had watched powerful men threaten each other without raising their voices.
I suddenly realized Alister did it too.
He had simply never done it in front of me.
“Don’t talk to him like that,” I said.
Alister looked at me.
The irritation disappeared instantly.
“Emery, sweetheart—”
“Don’t.”
His face went still.
I had never interrupted him that way.
“I want to see every document connected to the two hundred eighty thousand dollars.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“I think it is.”
“We can discuss this tonight.”
“No.”
Gideon shifted slightly beside me.
He did not speak.
But I could feel him there.
Solid.
Present.
Alister noticed too.
His mouth tightened.
“This is exactly why I told you that continuing at Ferris Group after the wedding was inappropriate.”
My pulse quickened.
“So I’m leaving my job because you don’t like my employer?”
“You’re leaving because a senator’s wife cannot spend her days serving as personal assistant to a man like him.”
“A man like him?”
Gideon’s expression almost became amused.
Almost.
Alister turned to him.
“You find this funny?”
“No.”
Gideon’s voice was low.
“I find it interesting that you keep talking about Emery’s future as though she isn’t standing here.”
Silence.
Alister looked at me again.
“We are leaving.”
There it was.
Not Would you come with me?
Not Can we talk?
We are leaving.
I pulled the engagement ring from my finger.
My hand trembled.
Alister’s eyes dropped to it.
Something dangerous flashed across his face.
“Put that back on.”
Kyle went completely still.
Gideon did too.
I closed my fingers around the ring.
“No.”
Alister stared at me.
“What did you say?”
“No.”
The word was easier the second time.
“I’m not ending anything today. I’m not making a scene. But I’m not wearing this until I understand what you did to my brother.”
His face hardened.
“You are embarrassing yourself.”
I almost laughed.
There it was.
The mechanism.
Make me doubt myself.
Make me feel irrational.
Make my reaction the problem.
Five years of negotiations beside Gideon had taught me something Alister had apparently forgotten.
Silence was sometimes more powerful than argument.
So I simply looked at him.
Eventually, he said, “Saturday. Hartwell. We’ll discuss this after.”
“I haven’t said I’m coming.”
“You will.”
Then he walked out.
His two men followed.
The room remained silent until the elevator doors closed.
Kyle exhaled.
“Emery, I am so sorry.”
I turned to him.
“Show me everything.”
He did.
Emails.
Loan transfers.
Debt acquisitions.
A consulting agreement Kyle had never signed.
An unsigned term sheet that would have given a shell corporation thirty percent of Nash Bio.
I looked at Gideon.
“You knew about this shell company?”
“Yes.”
“Who owns it?”
His expression changed.
“That’s complicated.”
“Try me.”
“Meridian Strategic Holdings.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“You weren’t supposed to.”
“Who owns Meridian?”
Gideon hesitated.
Then:
“Alister’s father controls it.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“His father?”
“Senator Charles Pemberton.”
Kyle whispered a curse.
Gideon continued.
“They’ve been purchasing distressed technology through intermediaries for years.”
“For what?”
“Sometimes money.”
He looked at me.
“Sometimes influence.”
I thought of Alister’s campaign.
His donor dinners.
His promises about innovation and national security.
“Does Alister know?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
For the first time, Gideon looked uncomfortable.
Not uncertain.
Uncomfortable.
“Because I’ve done business with them.”
Kyle stared at him.
“What kind of business?”
Gideon’s gaze remained on me.
“The kind Emery has spent five years knowing enough not to ask about.”
And suddenly the room changed again.
Because Alister might be dangerous.
But Gideon Ferris was not innocent.
He had never pretended to be.
I stepped toward him.
“If I’m going to trust you, I need the truth.”
His eyes met mine.
“All of it?”
“Yes.”
He was silent for several seconds.
Then he said, “Not here.”
“Where?”
“My house.”
Kyle made a noise of protest.
I ignored him.
“What’s at your house?”
Gideon’s expression turned grim.
“A ledger.”
My skin prickled.
“What kind of ledger?”
“The kind that could end Alister Pemberton’s campaign.”
A pause.
“And possibly send his father to prison.”
For the first time that day, I understood why Gideon had not simply warned me sooner.
This was not an argument about a wedding.
This was a war.
May you like
And somehow I had been standing in the middle of it without knowing.
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