How to Tame a Silver Fox – Episode 28
Mark’s warning repeated once before the connection died. Chris stood motionless, forced to consider that the man he had mourned for eight years might now be holding his best friend captive.
Harper replayed the recording. “We don’t know when this was made or whether he was forced to say it.” She refused to let a single message determine what they believed.
Christina recognized a metallic chime behind Mark’s voice. It sounded every hour at the Fawkes family’s shipping office, nowhere near Pier Nine.
The dock instructions were a diversion. Sebastian wanted Chris and his security team pulled away from the real location.
Chris ordered his men to make the convoy toward Pier Nine visible while he and Harper took an unmarked car to the shipping office. He did not like bringing her, but her knowledge of Mark’s voice and Christina’s access codes made her essential.
“You stay beside me,” he said as they drove. “That is a request.”
Harper almost smiled. “Accepted.”
They entered through a loading bay Christina unlocked remotely. The warehouse beyond appeared empty, but fresh tire marks crossed the dusty floor.
A muffled thud came from an upstairs office. Chris moved toward it, and Harper followed close enough to honor their agreement.
They found Mark tied to a chair, bruised but conscious. Chris cut him free while Harper checked the room for another exit.
“Evan is alive,” Mark said. “But he isn’t behind this. He disappeared to protect Cole after Sloane found out he survived.”
Chris demanded to know why Mark had hidden the truth. Eight years of guilt turned each word into an accusation.
Mark admitted Evan had required secrecy as the price of testifying. An investigator warned that someone inside Chris’s organization was leaking information, so even Chris could not be told.
“You let me believe I abandoned him,” Chris said. The betrayal cut deeper because Mark had watched him carry it.
“I chose the case over you,” Mark replied. “I thought keeping Evan alive justified it.”
Harper saw both men retreat behind anger before either could say what the loss had cost. Their friendship had survived a lie only because one of them never knew it existed.
A monitor on the wall flickered to life. Evan Mercer appeared on-screen, older and scarred but unmistakably alive.
“If you found Mark,” Evan said, “then Sloane has already found Cole. Bring Chris to the nightclub before midnight—or my son will die because of me.”
