Fog rolled over the water. Rusted cranes loomed like skeletons. Camila waited in a white coat beside a silver Bentley, one hand on Arthur’s wheelchair.
“I brought it,” Amelia shouted, lifting the ledger.
Camila smiled as Amelia approached. It was the smile of a woman already imagining herself victorious. She snatched the ledger, flipped through enough pages to confirm it was real, then nodded to the guard behind Arthur.
“Now let him go,” Amelia said.
Camila’s smile deepened.
“Oh, I will.”
The guard shoved the wheelchair over the edge.
Arthur disappeared into the black water.
Amelia did not think. She dove.
The cold hit like violence made liquid. Darkness swallowed her. She found the chair by instinct and terror, fingers closing over metal as it sank. Arthur hung limp in the straps. She clawed at buckles with numb hands, lungs burning, vision tightening.
Then the water above her detonated in white churn.
Langston.
He came through the lake like something summoned by wrath itself, suit and all, knife in hand. He pushed Amelia toward the surface, then plunged deeper to slash Arthur free from the chair.
When Amelia broke into the night air, she was coughing, sobbing, half blind. Men hauled her onto the dock. Seconds later Langston surfaced with Arthur in his arms.
Arthur had a pulse.
That should have been enough for one night, but justice had been waiting with its teeth out.
Camila had not escaped. Langston’s helicopter had landed across her path. His men had boxed her in. She stood shivering beside the Bentley, still beautiful in the way frost can be beautiful before it kills a garden.
Langston walked toward her dripping lake water and fury.
“You threw a sick old man into the harbor,” he said, and his voice was so calm it made everyone nearby flinch.
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