He’s not the biggest or strongest man in the city, but he is the owner of... most of it. We all just live in his world.
Out of the eight heirs, Beatrice, Zack, Tucker, Patricia, Iris, and I are here. Matthew and Virginia are away it seems, and it’s not like anyone can blame them, this wasn’t a planned meeting. Harrison texted us only a little over half an hour ago and told us to get our asses here.
All the Chairs made it, though, and the only ones who look outwardly annoyed are Michelle Blackwell—one of her plays had its first show tonight—and Stephen Windsor, who was probably in an art gallery or something super boring.
I’m the one who’s going to have to deal with the aftermath of this little field trip, though. Erasing CCTV feeds and any trace that we were all here is probably how I’ll spend the rest of the night.
“Oh hey, before we leave I’m going to need all your phones,” I whisper to our group of... fourteen, fucking hell, that’s going to be a lot of work. And they’re all looking at me like I’m the one who’s crazy. Right. “You know what? I’ll just send you all an email with a link so I can erase all your GPS histories.” I wave them away and they all focus on the front door again, on Harrison... fucking opening the mayor’s front door like he owns it.
Which again, he might.
I don’t know if I’m the only one who knows this is the mayor’s house. I guess Baron Alton, the Chair of Law in the Turris, could know, and maybe all the other Chairs too?
I look at Dad, and yeah, he looks uneasy to say the least.
“Come here, Eli,” Harrison mutters once we’re all standing in the narrow foyer of the house. I walk closer and he nods at my tablet. “Can you tell me if there are cameras inside the house?”
“There are.” I already checked.
“Where is Brent?”
I flip through the different feeds until I find him, and my breath catches in my throat.
“Office,” I manage to say through the fear gripping my throat.
“Don’t worry, Eli. Nobody’s going to get hurt.” I can’t bring myself to believe him.
Eian fucking Dempsey is being held at gunpoint by the fucking mayor of New York City, and he’s reaching for the gun on the desk?—
I look away. There’s just no way I’ll ever sleep again if I see someone get murdered.
“Where is the office?” he murmurs.
“Down the hall,” I whisper. “Last door.”
Harrison moves and we all follow in a single file, around the stairs that go up then the ones that go down, and when we get to the door, he turns to me again.
“Can you control the lights or the computers inside?” he asks me, but his gaze is fixed on the screen, and if I’m not wrong, he looks worried. We can’t hear what they’re saying, though Brent is clearly talking. The door has to be thick, because only murmurs pass through it.
“There are speakers?” I say it like a question.
“That works.”
“Okay.” I let out a big breath. “What do you want the audio to be?”
“Can it be my voice?”
That’s a little more complicated, but I get to work and only a minute or so later, I hold the tablet up to him and nod.
“Press that red circle, then you can say whatever you want.”
He nods quickly, and with a kind of urgency he can’t hide, taps the screen.
“Mr. Brent. Please put the gun down.”
I’m surprised he asked so nicely, and I have to lean on my tiptoes to see the feed again.
Brent is looking around frantically, scared, but after a long moment, he lowers his arm to his side. Harrison reaches for the doorknob and steps in.
