Chapter 5 - The Choice Conrad Offered
Olivia removed her coat and laid it across the back of a chair.
The white fitting dress made the old apartment feel smaller, as though the wedding had followed her into a room filled with childhood memories.
Elise did not touch the letter addressed to Olivia.
“What did Conrad tell you?” she asked.
Olivia looked at the ledger on the screen.
“He said my father stole classified records before he disappeared. He claimed those records could destroy Noah’s family and damage national security.”
“And you believed him?”
“No.”
The answer came quickly.
Then Olivia looked away.
“But I believed he was desperate enough to hurt someone if I refused to cooperate.”
Daniel stood near the window, checking the street below.
“What choice did he offer?”
Olivia’s fingers tightened around the edge of the chair.
“He told me to convince Elise not to attend the wedding. In exchange, he would leave my father’s name out of a report he plans to release after the ceremony.”
“What report?” Elise asked.
“One that blames my father for the faulty components. Conrad has inspection documents with Thomas’s signature.”
“Forged,” Daniel said.
“I know that. But the public will not know. Noah’s company controls half the defense publications that would report the story.”
Elise studied Olivia’s face.
“Does Noah know?”
“No.”
“You are marrying him in three weeks.”
“I am marrying Noah, not his father.”
“That distinction will disappear the moment Conrad forces you to choose between them.”
Olivia’s eyes flashed.
“You think I don’t understand that?”
Elise softened her voice.
“I think you have been carrying this alone.”
For the first time, Olivia looked frightened rather than angry.
She sat on the edge of the bed where she had slept as a child.
“Noah has spent his entire life trying to prove he is not Conrad,” she said. “He left the family company. He built his own architecture firm. He refused their money until the wedding.”
“Until the wedding?” Daniel asked.
Olivia nodded.
“Conrad offered to pay for everything. Noah said it would make his mother happy. I agreed because I wanted one day without another fight.”
Elise glanced at the elaborate invitation.
Conrad had not paid for the wedding as a gift.
He had purchased control of the room.
The guest list.
The security staff.
The microphones.
The timing.
“What happens at the reception?” Elise asked.
Olivia hesitated.
“Conrad is making an announcement after my toast.”
“About what?”
“He would not tell me.”
Daniel turned from the window.
“There is a dark sedan parked across the street.”
Olivia stood.
“It followed me from the fitting.”
Elise picked up the letter Thomas had left for his daughter.
“You need to read this.”
Olivia shook her head.
“What if it changes everything?”
“It already has.”
Elise placed the envelope in her hands.
Olivia broke the seal.
The letter was only two pages long.
Her eyes moved quickly at first, then slowed.
Halfway through, she sat down again.
“No,” she whispered.
Elise waited.
Olivia finished the letter and pressed it against her chest.
“What did he say?” Daniel asked.
Olivia’s voice became almost inaudible.
“My father knew his aircraft had been sabotaged before he took off.”
Elise felt the room tilt beneath her.
“He knew?”
“He wrote that he accepted the flight because someone threatened me. They sent him a photograph of me leaving school.”
Elise took the letter.
Thomas’s words were precise.
If I refuse the mission, they will know I have the ledger. If I accept it, I may have enough time to move the final evidence. Elise will protect you, even if she never forgives me for not telling her.
Elise stopped reading.
For fifteen years, she had believed Thomas boarded the aircraft unaware of the danger.
He had known.
He had chosen the flight to protect Olivia.
At the bottom of the second page, he had written one final instruction.
The man who taught me never to salute a uniform until I trusted the person wearing it keeps the second section.
Olivia looked up.
“That was my grandfather.”
“Admiral James Mercer,” Daniel said.
“He died before my father disappeared,” Olivia replied.
Elise read the sentence again.
“No. Thomas was not talking about James.”
She remembered a ceremony from years earlier.
Thomas standing beside an older officer.
The officer correcting his salute and saying, Trust the person, not the uniform.
Only one man had ever spoken to Thomas that way.
Samuel Wren.
The admiral they believed had died six years ago.
A knock sounded at the apartment door.
Three slow strikes.
Then Noah’s voice came through the wood.
“Olivia, I know you’re in there.”
She rose in alarm.
“I did not tell him where I was going.”
May you like
Noah knocked again.
“And I know Elise is with you.”
