Chapter 14 - The Shadow Partner
The drive home felt like a hallucination.
Thomas Reed.
He was the man who had supposedly retired to Florida fifteen years ago.
He was the man who had sent flowers to my mother’s funeral.
And according to this folder, he was the man who had been orchestrating the destruction of my father’s company since I was a child.
I walked into the house, and the silence was heavy.
I found my father in the library, reading a book by the fireplace.
He looked up.
"You look like you've seen a ghost."
I threw the folder onto the desk.
"Thomas Reed."
My father stopped breathing.
His face went gray.
"Where did you get this?"
"Ethan’s people. They were angry, Dad. They were discarded."
My father looked at the folder, then at me.
"I thought he was gone."
"He was never gone."
My father rubbed his temples.
"I made a mistake," he said. "I thought I could push him out without causing a war."
"You did," I said. "But he didn't leave."
He paced the room.
"This changes everything."
"It doesn't change anything," I said. "It just identifies the enemy."
He looked at me, a flash of the man he used to be—the man who would stand at a door with a baseball bat—shining in his eyes.
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"You want to fight him?"
"I don't want to fight him," I said. "I want to finish him."
