LET GO OF THE MICROPHONE. THAT BOY WILL TELL HIS STORY.” THE BILLIONAIRE’S FIANCÉE GRABBED HIS 64-YEAR-OLD FORMER

“Where are you, Sarah?” I asked, my grip tightening on the phone.

“I’m at the Greyhound station on 95th Street,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “A guard came to my cell an hour ago. He said the charges were dropped, handed me my clothes, and pushed me out the back door. There’s a man in a gray sedan watching me from the parking lot. He’s been there since I walked out.”

I locked eyes with Graham and put the phone on speaker. “Sarah, it’s Graham Whitmore. Do not leave the station. Go into the women’s restroom, lock yourself in a stall, and wait. We are coming to get you.”

“Hurry,” she choked out before the line went dead.

Graham stood up instantly. He turned to Dr. Reeves. “Helen, take the children into the private VIP suite down the hall. Order them whatever food they want. Lock the door. My security team will stand outside.”

Dr. Reeves nodded, immediately ushering Eli and the other eleven children toward the back hallway. I gave Eli a reassuring squeeze on his shoulder before he disappeared behind the heavy oak doors.

“Let’s go,” Graham said, grabbing my arm.

We bypassed his chauffeured limousine outside the hotel. “Too conspicuous,” he muttered. Instead, he led me to a battered Ford pickup truck parked in the alley.

“You still drive this?” I asked, surprised.

“It keeps me grounded,” he said, unlocking the doors. “And right now, it keeps us invisible.”

The drive to 95th Street was a blur of Chicago streetlights and tense silence. Graham drove with white-knuckled focus. I kept looking at the brass key he had given me, wondering how a scholarship gala had devolved into a rescue mission.

When we pulled into the bus station parking lot, the rain had started to fall.

“There,” Graham pointed.

A gray sedan was idling near the entrance. The driver was a broad-shouldered man smoking a cigarette, his eyes fixed on the station doors.

Graham parked the truck a row away. “Stay here, Margaret.”

“Absolutely not,” I said, opening my door. “She knows my voice. I’m going in.”

Graham didn’t argue. We moved quickly through the rain, slipping through the station’s side entrance. The terminal was mostly empty, smelling of stale coffee and damp floors.

I rushed into the women’s restroom. “Sarah? It’s Margaret Ellis.”

A stall door squeaked open. A thin woman in her thirties stepped out. She looked exhausted, her hair plastered to her forehead, shivering in a cheap denim jacket. When she saw me, her knees buckled.

I caught her, wrapping my arms around her. “I’ve got you. Eli is safe. He’s safe.”

Sarah sobbed into my shoulder. “They told me if I ever talked about the Vanguard accounts, they’d make sure Eli went into the foster system permanently.”

“Vivian and Arthur are in police custody,” I told her gently. “It’s over.”

We walked her out to the terminal where Graham was waiting. He took off his suit jacket and draped it over her trembling shoulders. “Let’s get you to your son.”

We stepped out into the rainy parking lot.

The gray sedan was gone.

“He left,” Graham said, looking around cautiously.

We hurried toward the pickup truck. But as we got closer, my stomach dropped.

Both passenger-side tires had been slashed. The rubber was completely flat against the wet asphalt.

“Graham,” I warned, stepping back.

A figure stepped out from the shadows of the alley behind the truck. It was the man from the gray sedan. He was holding a heavy steel tire iron.

But it wasn’t his weapon that caught my attention. It was his boots. Heavy, mud-caked steel-toe work boots.

Graham froze. “Uncle David?”

The man stepped into the light of a streetlamp. He shared Graham’s strong jawline, but his eyes were hard and bitter.

“Hello, Graham,” David Whitmore said, tapping the tire iron against his leg. “Arthur called me from his holding cell. He said you were unraveling our retirement fund.”

Graham stood protectively in front of me and Sarah. “You’re part of this? You helped them steal from children?”

“I helped build you!” David barked, stepping closer. “When your father left, who paid the rent? I did. And when you hit your first billion, what did I get? A middle-management job at a warehouse while you gave millions to strangers.”

“I offered you an executive position,” Graham said, his voice laced with heartbreak. “You refused to learn the software.”

“I shouldn’t have to learn anything to get what’s owed to me!” David raised the tire iron. “Sarah comes with me. We need leverage to get Arthur out.”