Two Little Secrets From My Boss

Chapter 102

"His passport was scanned at Terminal Four six hours ago—international departures.” David Lee called at seven in the morning with the JFK report. “TSA has the entry log, timestamped at 1:47 AM.

But here's the problem: he never boarded a flight. No airline has a record of him purchasing a ticket, no gate scanner registered his passport, and no boarding pass was issued under his name or any known alias."

"Security cameras?"

"The footage shows him entering the terminal through the main doors, walking past the check-in counters, and then—nothing. He doesn't appear on any feed after the initial entry. He walked into JFK and ceased to exist on camera."

I called Martin Gould. "Gerald's bank accounts?"

"No activity since the day before yesterday. Either he withdrew cash before we flagged the accounts, or someone else is funding his disappearance."

"Victor?"

"Victor's assets are frozen, but only the accounts we identified. A man with Ashford's resources has offshore vehicles and trust structures we haven't mapped. If Victor is funding this, tracing the money could take weeks."

"We don't have weeks."

"I know. I've requested expedited FBI cooperation. Gerald is now officially a person of interest who evaded a law enforcement interview and demonstrated evidence of flight."

I stood in the kitchen gripping the counter, morning light coming through the windows with indifferent cheerfulness.

A strategic Gerald—the one who'd orchestrated fifteen years of patient revenge—was dangerous but predictable. A Gerald who had abandoned strategy, vanishing into the spaces between surveillance cameras and bank records, was something entirely different.

An unpredictable enemy was infinitely more dangerous, because without rules there was no way to calculate what came next.

The handwritten letter arrived at two in the afternoon. The building's security team intercepted it in the mail room—standard protocol since the school photograph—and brought it to our door in a sealed evidence bag.

Plain white envelope, no return address, postmarked the day Gerald disappeared. My name on the front in precise, angular handwriting that I recognized from Gerald's signature on the documents in Marcus's archive.

I opened it with gloved hands—Martin's instructions, preserve the forensics—and unfolded a single sheet of cream-colored stationery. The message was brief, written in the same precise hand:

‘I'm surprised he hasn't sacrificed you. That makes you the most dangerous piece on the board. I wonder if you know that yet.’

I read it three times. He wasn't just threatening me. He was acknowledging me—the way a chess player acknowledges the piece that changed the game.

That acknowledgment terrified me more than any explicit threat could have. I called my mother:

"Mom, how are the girls? Please be honest with me. Are you all okay there? Have you noticed anything strange or suspicious lately?"

"They are fine, dear, we all are fine. What happened?"

"Gerald Morrison is missing, and he sent me a letter. The security team will coordinate the logistics—just trust them and keep the girls close. I'll explain everything when this is over."

"We'll be careful, Daphne. No one will take them."

I coordinated with David to map Gerald's known associates—anyone who might shelter a fugitive with unlimited patience and a vendetta that had transcended rationality. The list was shorter than expected.

Gerald had spent years converting relationships into instruments of revenge, and when the revenge collapsed, those relationships collapsed with it. The man who'd vanished had very few people left willing to harbor him.

That didn't make him less dangerous. A man with no allies has no one to restrain him, no voice of moderation tethering him to consequences.

Xander stood in the living room. The shaking was subtle—a tremor in his jaw, a tension in his shoulders visible only to someone who knew his body intimately.

"He's beyond strategy now," he said. "This isn't a chess game anymore, Daphne. This is a man holding a match, standing next to gasoline, and he doesn't care if he burns with it."

"I know."

"I should have taken his confession demand, given him what he wanted, let him have the public spectacle. At least then he would have been satisfied, at least then he would have had somewhere to put the rage—"

"Our daughters would have grown up under the shadow of their father's public humiliation. And Gerald still wouldn't have been satisfied because it was never the point. A man who has organized his entire existence around destroying someone else doesn't stop when he gets what he asks for. He just asks for more."

Xander turned from the window, his face pale, eyes carrying the anguish of a man who understands the danger his family faces is a consequence of choices he made before his family existed.

"What do we do?"

"Everything we've been doing. Security on the girls, coordination with law enforcement, legal pressure on Victor to give up Gerald's location in exchange for reduced charges. And we wait. Gerald will surface because the obsession demands expression. And when he does, we'll be ready."

"You sound certain."

"I sound like a woman who has been underestimated by powerful men her entire life and is thoroughly finished with it."

He smiled faintly.

I held steady for the rest of the afternoon—calls, coordination, strategy sessions with Martin, David, and the FBI liaison. I held steady through dinner, through the evening briefing, through the quiet hours when Xander fell asleep on the couch with his phone in his hand.

At eleven o'clock, I walked into the bathroom, closed the door, and locked it. I gave myself some time.

My breath came in ragged, uneven pulls that scraped against the inside of my throat. The fear I'd been containing all day erupted through every barrier I'd constructed and filled the small, tiled room with a force that buckled my knees.

Gerald Morrison was out there. Invisible, unrestrained, obsessed. He knew everything about us. He had demonstrated, repeatedly, that he was willing to destroy anyone in Xander's orbit, and I was the person closest to the center.

I let the terror have about a minute—every shaking breath, every surge of adrenaline, every image of my daughters' faces that my fear-soaked imagination projected onto the bathroom tiles.

Then I splashed cold water on my face, dried my hands, straightened my shoulders, and unlocked the door.

The woman who walked back into the living room was the same woman—steady, clear-eyed, prepared. That minute of weakness in the bathroom was entirely hers. Everything else belonged to her family.