The footsteps were coming from the stairs, not from the elevator.
Vincent locked the door and looked at the head of security.
“Lock all exits.”
“And Harper?” Gideon asked.
“She will stay with me.”
“That is exactly what I was talking about. She has gained influence over you.”
For the first time Vincent did not answer.
His phone rang. Then the head of security’s. Then the old communication device standing in the corner of the office rang too.
Everywhere at the same time.
Gideon was losing control from his hands.
“Call the lawyer,” Vincent told me.
He dialed the number. In a few seconds his face changed.
“What did he say?”
“He said he no longer represents us.”
“Why?”
“He has already received our financial documents from the investigative agency and decided to protect himself.”
Gideon became frightened.
“Did you arrange all this in advance?” he asked me.
“I did not,” I told him. “You arranged it. I only left a trail you could no longer erase.”
Vincent held my small recorder in his hand. A red light blinked on the screen.
At that moment a message came to his second phone in the room. It was footage from a security camera. Gideon was standing in a warehouse and telling someone that after Vincent’s death the company would belong to him.
In the recording his voice was clearer than it was now.
“Harper must disappear first. Vincent cannot think without her.”
Gideon covered his ears with his hands.
“Turn it off!”
“That is your voice,” Vincent said.
“No.”
“You said it yourself.”
Gideon shook his head, but his own words could still be heard from the screen. For the first time he heard himself the way others listened to him. He realized that the enemy was not standing in the room.
The enemy was himself.
At four in the morning Gideon and the head of security were taken away. I stood by the window and looked at the wet roofs of the city. Vincent stopped behind me.
“Stay with me.”
“I can’t.”
“Please.”
I had rarely heard this word from him. That was why answering was difficult for me.
“I have to leave because of the baby.”
“There are three of us.”
“You still think that changing the family name will solve everything.”
“No. Now for the first time I think I must earn your trust.”
In the morning we still went to the old warehouse, but not alone. Vincent brought two trusted people, and I had already sent copies of the recording to the investigators.
Dusty lamps flickered in the warehouse. In the corner stood Gideon’s old truck. A dark stain could be seen on its seat, and in the toolbox we found a pistol whose number matched the weapon that had appeared years ago in the case of Vincent’s father’s murder.
Then everything became clear.
Gideon had killed Vincent’s father and then presented the murder as an accident. He had waited for years to take the company into his hands. Now he had united killing Vincent and making me disappear into one plan.
Vincent looked at the gun for a long time.
“All my life I blamed the wrong man,” he said.
“You did not know.”
“But I should have known.”
“Now you know.”
Exactly then the investigator came and took the documents. I went to the hospital, and the doctor confirmed that the pregnancy was at an early stage and that stress could be dangerous for the baby.
Vincent stood in the corridor and held my small item in his hand—the old copper bookmark I had carried on my bag for four years. A small image of a bird was engraved on it. My father had given it to me and always told me that when leaving a book, I should leave the bookmark where the road ended.
“Take this too,” Vincent told me.
“Why?”
“Because this road ends here.”
I did not take it. For the first time, he was left without something.
Three weeks later I changed cities. I found a small apartment in Milwaukee, by the river. In the morning I worked at a financial consulting company, and in the evening I arranged a small room for the baby.
Vincent wrote to me once a week. At first it was only one sentence: “How are you?” Then: “Today I went to the doctor and read about the baby.” Then the letters stopped too.
I was not offended.
Sometimes silence can also be the first attempt at respect.
Four months later, on the day of the first snow, my little niece Lea visited me. She sat on the floor, spread out colored pencils, and drew a small house on my stomach.
“This is our house,” she told me.
“Why does it not have windows?”
“Because no one can enter here without knocking.”
I laughed and, for the first time in a long while, breathed peacefully.
That same evening I received the last message from Vincent.
“I left the company. Gideon is facing trial. Everything about your father has also been confirmed. I ask nothing of you. I only want to tell you once that I locked the door then because I was afraid of losing you. Now I know that love is not a lock.”
I looked at the screen for a long time.
Then I wrote:
“You should not save me. Nor am I obliged to save you. Our child needs peace. If you ever become part of this peace, the door will open by itself.”
No reply came from him.
Several months later, when I lifted the baby from the bed for the first time, I saw the old copper bookmark on the shelf. I had not taken it from Vincent at the hospital that day. He sent it to me by mail and wrote only one word: “Ours.”
I put the bookmark in the book, but did not close it completely.
Snow was falling quietly outside the window.
The baby’s breathing could be heard in the small room.
And for the first time I was no longer waiting to see who would open the door.
The door was open.
Missed the beginning?
