Chapter 44: The Bookstore

Elena didn't look away from the man with Mark’s jawline. She crossed the street with the laptop bag clutched against her chest like a shield, her boots crunching through the slush of the Brattleboro sidewalk. The bell above the door chimed a cheerful, domestic note that felt like a mockery of the soot under her fingernails and the blood on her cable.

David Vance didn't look up from the display of vintage postcards he was straightening. "We're open, but I'm not buying today," he said, his voice a low, gravelly rasp. "Too much inventory, not enough space."

"I'm not selling anything, David," Elena said.

He froze. The postcard in his hand—a faded image of the Zurich opera house—bent under the sudden pressure of his thumb. He turned slowly, his eyes scanning her face with a clinical, defensive intensity. He didn't see a sister-in-law; he saw a breach in the perimeter he had spent twenty years reinforcing.

"Elena," he breathed. He didn't move to hug her. He moved toward the door, his hand reaching for the deadbolt. "You shouldn't be here. Mark promised me you were the one who didn't know. He promised you were the safety."

"The safety is off, David." She stepped deeper into the shop, the smell of vanilla and old paper a sharp contrast to the ozone of the cabin she’d just escaped. "Mark is at a satellite office in Lake Placid, packing a bag for a life he thinks he can still have. Julianne is at Blackwood with Mia. And an ambulance just went through the pass with silent lights."

David’s face drained of color, the red veins in his cheeks standing out like a map of broken promises. He locked the door and flipped the sign back to *CLOSED* with a violent snap. "I told him," he hissed, grabbing her elbow and steering her toward the back of the store. "I told him he couldn't keep her. I told him Vargas was a black hole."

"He told me Sarah Vance died in 2003," Elena said, her voice rising as they entered a cramped office overflowing with leather-bound ledgers. "He told me he was a widower. But I found the drive, David. I found the 'J-Rescue' folder. I know about the twins. I know Julianne swapped the marrow match to keep the money flowing."

David slammed his fist onto a stack of books, sending a cloud of dust into the stagnant air. "That greedy, stupid woman. She thought she could outplay a man who buys governments."

"She isn't just outplaying him, David. She’s killing Mia. Thorne is there. He’s going to start the harvest, and when Vargas finds out the marrow doesn't match—"

"He'll kill the donor to hide the evidence of the fraud," David finished. He sat heavily in a creaking wooden chair, his head in his hands. "He was always going to do that, Elena. The match was never about saving Gabriel. It was about who controlled the Vargas estate after he was gone."

Elena pulled the universal reader from her bag and set it on the desk between them.

"I have the ledger," she said. "I have the medical files. But I need to know the name of the man in the reflection. The father. The one who isn't Vargas."

David looked at the drive, then at Elena. The fear in his eyes shifted, hardening into something cold and final. He reached into the top drawer of his desk and pulled out a heavy, silver-plated lighter. He didn't strike it. He just ran his thumb over the engraving: *L’Miroir*.

"If you know that name," David whispered, "you're already dead."