Chapter 1 - The Night Jillian Ran Into the Enemy
Jillian Bannon lost one shoe somewhere between the back terrace and the iron gates.
She did not stop to look for it.
Cold October gravel cut into the bottom of her bare foot as she ran down the long driveway of the Bannon estate, clutching her phone so tightly her fingers hurt.
Behind her, someone shouted her name.
“Jillian, stop!”
She recognized Patrick's cousin, Dean.
Another man called from farther back.
“Nobody's going to hurt you. Malcolm just wants to talk.”
That frightened her more than a threat would have.
Because Jillian believed him.
They probably did not intend to hurt her.
They simply intended to keep her inside that house until she told them where Cody was.
Her phone showed three percent battery.
Patrick was nearly two hours away.
Cody was safe with his grandmother in Pennsylvania—at least Jillian prayed he still was.
She reached the gate just as a black Lincoln Navigator slowed on the road outside.
She did not check the license plate.
She did not think.
She pulled open the rear door and threw herself inside.
“Please drive.”
Then she looked up.
Her entire body went cold.
Across from her sat Emmett Carbone.
For twenty years, the Carbone name had been spoken carefully inside the Bannon family.
Not always with hatred.
Sometimes with respect.
Sometimes with anger.
But never casually.
Emmett was sixty-three. Silver-haired, broad-shouldered, dressed in a plain charcoal overcoat. There was nothing theatrical about him. No gold rings. No armed men crowded around him.
Only a driver in front and another man beside him.
Emmett looked at Jillian's bleeding foot.
Then at the Bannon men running toward the vehicle.
Dean reached the door first.
He bent slightly toward the tinted window.
“Mr. Carbone. This is a family matter.”
Emmett did not answer him.
He looked at Jillian.
“Do you want to go back with him?”
“No.”
The word came out immediately.
Emmett pressed the lock button.
Click.
Dean's face hardened outside the glass.
Emmett turned toward the driver.
“Drive.”
The Navigator pulled away.
Jillian twisted in her seat, watching Malcolm Bannon's estate disappear behind a line of bare trees.
Only then did she realize she was shaking.
Emmett handed her a clean handkerchief.
“You're bleeding.”
“I'm fine.”
“You're not.”
Jillian pressed the cloth against her foot for several seconds.
Nobody spoke.
Then Emmett asked, “What did you take?”
“Nothing.”
“Money?”
“No.”
“To commence?”
“No.”
His eyes narrowed slightly.
“Then why were three grown men chasing you down a driveway?”
Jillian looked at him.
“They think I know where Cody is.”
Emmett's expression changed.
Not much.
But enough.
“Patrick's son.”
“Yes.”
“I know.”
Emmett leaned back.
“Where is he?”
Jillian shook her head.
“I'm not telling you.”
To her surprise, Emmett nodded.
“Good.”
She stared at him.
He looked through the windshield.
“What does Malcolm want from a sixteen-year-old boy badly enough to stop his stepmother from leaving?”
Jillian swallowed.
Twelve days earlier, she would not have known how to answer.
Twelve days earlier, Cody was only a quiet teenager who drew strangers on index cards, worried about college, and still forgot his lunch twice a week.
Then Shawn Bannon died.
And one empty chair at the family table changed everything.
At 6:42 on a gray Monday morning, Jillian had found Cody sitting at the kitchen island with a bowl of cereal going soft beside his elbow.
He was not eating.
He was drawing.
“Cody.”
Nothing.
“Earth to Cody.”
The sixteen-year-old finally looked up, one earbud still in place.
“What?”
“You have eleven minutes.”
“For what?”
Jillian stared.
Cody glanced toward the clock.
“Oh.”
She smiled despite herself.
Every morning was like this.
Cody could remember the exact frame rate of an animated film made twenty years before he was born.
But he could forget that school started at the same time every day.
Jillian reached across the counter and picked up the small white index card beneath his hand.
He had drawn an elderly man standing beneath a bus shelter.
The man held a grocery bag against his chest while using his jacket to cover a small dog from the rain.
“You saw this yesterday?”
Cody nodded.
“He missed his bus because the dog was scared.”
“You talked to him?”
“No, of course not.”
Cody smiled.
He rarely spoke to strangers.
He preferred watching them, drawing them, finding the small things people did when they thought nobody was paying attention.
Jillian had learned that about him years ago.
She had learned almost everything slowly.
Cody had been eight when she married Patrick Bannon.
His biological mother, Laura, had died two years earlier.
Jillian had never tried to replace her.
She never asked Cody to call her Mom.
For three years, she was simply Jillian.
Then, when Cody was eleven, he fell from his bicycle and split his chin open.
Jillian spent seven hours beside him in the emergency room while Patrick was trapped at a job site in Connecticut.
At two in the morning, half asleep and frightened, Cody had whispered, “Mom, can I have some water?”
Neither of them mentioned it the next day.
But he never called her Jillian again.
Patrick entered the kitchen, adjusting his tie.
“You ready, buddy?”
“Almost.”
“You said that ten minutes ago.”
Patrick stole a piece of toast from Jillian's plate.
She slapped his hand away.
“Make your own.”
“I married for better health insurance and breakfast.”
“You chose poorly.”
Patrick laughed.
For a few seconds, they were simply a family getting ready for Monday.
Then Jillian noticed the funeral card attached to the refrigerator with a magnet.
Shawn Bannon.
Forty-nine years old.
Dead twelve days.
The picture showed Shawn laughing at a summer barbecue. One hand raised as if he had been caught halfway through telling someone to stop taking photographs.
The kitchen seemed quieter whenever Jillian looked at it.
Patrick noticed her gaze.
His smile disappeared.
“Dinner at Dad's tonight,” he said.
Cody's pencil stopped.
Just for a second.
Jillian noticed.
Patrick did not.
“What time?” she asked.
“Six-thirty.”
Cody shoved his index cards into his backpack.
“Do I have to go?”
Patrick looked surprised.
“It's Sunday dinner.”
“It's Monday.”
“You know what I mean.”
Cody lowered his eyes.
“Yeah.”
Patrick's phone rang.
He glanced at the screen.
“Dad.”
He stepped into the hallway.
Jillian watched Cody.
“You okay?”
“Fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
He zipped his backpack too quickly.
One card slipped onto the floor.
Cody did not see it.
Jillian picked it up after he left.
She had expected another sketch.
Instead, written across the back were five words.
Don't let them find the ledger.
Her stomach dropped.
That evening, the Bannon estate felt different.
Too many cars.
Too many men.
Too many conversations stopping when Jillian approached.
Malcolm Bannon, Patrick's father, sat at the head of the long dining table.
He was seventy-one, elegant, pale, and still physically imposing in the way men sometimes were when everyone in the room had spent decades making space for them.
Patrick sat beside him.
Dean stood near the fireplace.
A lawyer Jillian had never seen occupied the chair opposite.
Cody was nowhere to be found.
“Where's Cody?” Jillian asked.
Malcolm looked at her.
“Your son is upstairs.”
“He's sixteen, Malcolm. Why is he not at dinner?”
“He is family.”
“That doesn't answer my question.”
Patrick touched her wrist.
“Jillian.”
She looked at him.
Something in his face made her step back.
“What?”
“Sit down.”
“No.”
Malcolm sighed.
“Your husband is trying to tell you something.”
“Then he can tell me.”
Patrick stared at his plate.
Jillian's voice changed.
“Where is Cody?”
Malcolm answered.
“Safe.”
“With whom?”
“People who understand what is at stake.”
Jillian's heart stopped.
She turned toward the stairs.
Dean blocked her path.
That was when she knew.
This was not dinner.
It was an interrogation.
“What do you want?”
Malcolm folded his hands.
“Something Shawn left behind.”
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
“We think you do.”
“I don't.”
“You were the last person Shawn called.”
Jillian went still.
“What?”
Malcolm's eyes sharpened.
“At 10:48 on the night he died, he called your phone.”
She looked at Patrick.
“You knew?”
Patrick did not answer.
Jillian took out her phone.
The call history was there.
Blocked.
Thirty-two seconds.
She remembered it now.
She had been driving home.
Shawn had called from an unknown number.
He had said only:
“Don't trust Patrick.”
Then the line had gone dead.
Jillian had assumed it was a mistake.
Or grief.
Or the kind of strange last conversation people sometimes have after a death.
But she had never forgotten the fear in his voice.
Malcolm leaned forward.
“What did he tell you?”
“Nothing.”
“Where is the ledger?”
“There is no ledger.”
“Then why did Shawn draw one in the margins of his notebook?”
Jillian's heart raced.
“Because he drew all kinds of things.”
“You are lying.”
Patrick finally spoke.
“Dad, enough.”
Malcolm looked at him.
“You think this is still your choice?”
Patrick's face tightened.
Jillian turned toward her husband.
“Patrick.”
He looked at her.
His eyes were full of something she could not read.
Fear.
That was what she saw.
Not anger.
Not guilt.
Fear.
Then Malcolm's phone rang.
He answered.
His expression changed.
He stood.
“Where?”
Pause.
“What do you mean he escaped?”
Jillian froze.
Malcolm looked at Patrick.
Patrick looked toward the staircase.
A scream came from upstairs.
“Cody!”
Jillian ran.
Three men chased her.
She reached Cody's room.
The window was open.
His backpack was gone.
His phone lay shattered on the floor.
On the desk was another index card.
This time there was no drawing.
Only words.
Mom, don't trust anyone with the Bannon name.
Jillian turned.
Patrick stood behind her.
His face was white.
“Jillian.”
She stepped backward.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“Where is Cody?”
“I don't know.”
“Then why were you in his room?”
“I came after you.”
“Stay away from me.”
She ran.
Down the stairs.
Across the terrace.
Toward the gate.
And into the car of the one man the Bannon family had spent twenty years teaching her to fear.
Emmett Carbone.
Now, as the Navigator disappeared into the darkness, Jillian realized she had done something that could change everything.
She had chosen the enemy.
But what she did not know was that Emmett Carbone had spent the last twelve days searching for Cody too.
And he had not been searching for him because he wanted to hurt him.
He was trying to save him.
From Malcolm Bannon.
From the ledger.
And from a secret that, once revealed, would destroy both families.
Emmett looked at Jillian.
“Your phone.”
She hesitated.
“What?”
“Give it to me.”
“Why?”
“Because the Bannon estate has probably been tracking it.”
Jillian handed it over.
Emmett removed the battery.
The Navigator turned onto the highway.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Somewhere safe.”
“That's not an answer.”
“No.”
He looked at her bleeding foot.
“It isn't.”
Jillian stared at him.
“You know where Cody is.”
“Yes.”
Her breath caught.
“Where?”
“He isn't in Pennsylvania.”
“What?”
“He never made it to your mother-in-law.”
Jillian's face went pale.
“Then where is he?”
Emmett's eyes hardened.
“With someone I trust.”
“Who?”
“I'll tell you when we are somewhere no one can hear us.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“You shouldn't.”
She blinked.
“Then why did you let me into the car?”
His expression softened almost imperceptibly.
“Because your husband asked me to.”
Jillian went still.
“What?”
Emmett looked out the window.
“Patrick Bannon called me three days ago.”
“Why?”
“He told me that if he died, you would be hunted.”
Her pulse stumbled.
“Patrick said he might die?”
Emmett nodded.
“And he told me something else.”
“What?”
Emmett looked directly at her.
“He said you would run.”
The Navigator disappeared into the Chicago night.
And somewhere beneath the fear pounding through Jillian's chest was a realization more terrifying than the one she had already had.
Patrick had known this was coming.
He had prepared for her to escape.
And he had chosen the one man in Chicago powerful enough to keep her alive.
The rival his family hated.
May you like
The enemy she had just climbed into a car with.
Emmett Carbone.
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