Mrs. Hess and the Price of Fear
Chapter 11 - Mrs. Hess and the Price of Fear
Roman stopped before he entered the boathouse light.
Maeve could not see him, but she felt the change in the air when he understood the geometry of the room.
Mrs. Hess had a gun on Maeve.
Two men had positions near the dock door.
Lucia was in a wheelchair. Nell could barely stand. Gabriel was closest but blocked by a support beam and a woman desperate enough to shoot.
Declan was nowhere Maeve could see.
That might save them.
Or it might mean he was already dead.
“Gloria,” Roman said from the shadows.
Mrs. Hess flinched at her first name.
“Don’t.”
“You don’t want to do this.”
“You have no idea what I want.” Her voice broke. “You never did.”
Maeve looked at her carefully then.
The trembling hands. The exhaustion. The terror that had not begun today.
Mrs. Hess was not loyal to Varo.
She was trapped.
“You left me in that house,” Maeve said.
The woman’s eyes filled.
“I tried to get you to quit.”
“You told me to last forty-eight hours.”
“I needed you alive for forty-eight hours.”
“Why?”
Mrs. Hess swallowed.
“Because after that, Roman would notice you.”
Silence moved through the boathouse.
Even the rain seemed to listen.
Gabriel stared at her. “You arranged the agency call.”
“Yes.”
Roman’s voice lowered. “For Varo?”
“For Lucia.”
Lucia lifted her head.
Mrs. Hess began crying then, silently and with shame.
“I found her six months ago. I was checking old foundation payments. Mercy Island was still receiving money for a dead woman.”
Varo’s men shifted uneasily.
Mrs. Hess raised the gun again, but not steadily.
“I tried to tell you. Varo found out first. He took my son.”
There it was.
The hook in her heart.
Maeve thought of Nell and felt anger rearrange itself into something heavier.
“Where is your son?” she asked.
“Varo has him at the cannery.”
Roman stepped into view now, hands raised.
“You should have come to me.”
Mrs. Hess laughed once. “You? You three were raised to suspect love and punish mistakes. I watched you grow into your father’s house.”
The words hit all three brothers differently.
Gabriel looked away.
Roman absorbed them like a sentence deserved.
Then Declan appeared behind one of Varo’s men and put him down without a sound.
Maeve saw it but did not react.
The second man saw her eyes move.
He turned.
Gabriel moved at the same time.
Everything happened fast after that.
A gunshot cracked against the boathouse wall. Nell screamed. Lucia grabbed the chair arms. Maeve dropped to the floor because she did know one useful thing about guns: lower was harder to hit.
Declan collided with the second man.
Gabriel knocked Mrs. Hess’s pistol aside.
Roman reached Maeve and covered her body with his before she could tell him that was foolish, arrogant, and deeply inconvenient.
Then it was over.
One man groaned on the boards. One did not move. Mrs. Hess sobbed against Gabriel’s shoulder, repeating, “My son, my son,” until even Declan’s face changed.
Roman helped Maeve sit up.
“Are you hit?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I would complain louder.”
Something flickered in his eyes.
Relief.
He looked toward Mrs. Hess. “We get the boy.”
Declan stood, breathing hard. “And Varo?”
Roman’s face went cold.
Maeve knew that look now.
It was not rage.
It was arithmetic.
Mrs. Hess lifted her head. “There’s something else.”
Roman turned.
The woman wiped her face with shaking hands.
“Varo doesn’t only want the seal. He wants Maeve.”
“Why?” Maeve asked, though part of her no longer wanted answers.
Mrs. Hess looked at Lucia.
“Because Rose never told anyone whose baby she carried out with Nell.”
The room went still.
May you like
Mrs. Hess looked back at Maeve.
“Your father was Vittorio Falcone.”
