Before I could reply, Lieutenant Acosta held his palm up to her and said, “Mr. Morgan put his life on the line to save your husband, Mrs. Wise. Octavia Reynaldo gave her life trying to save your husband.”
Gasps went up all around the room. Cherie looked even more distraught. Seeing that and the shock on the faces of the good people of Private Rio threw me back into utter misery and it took every bit of strength I had not to break down.
“No,” Natalie said, holding her stomach and bursting into tears. “No. No.”
Her sister put her face in her hands and continued weeping.
“It wasn’t…” Alicia choked. “He wasn’t…Rayssa said…”
Lieutenant Acosta stepped toward her, said, “Ms. Wise?”
Alicia raised her head, peered at him with tortured eyes.
Natalie looked at her sister in terror. “No.”
Alicia’s jaw quivered and her skin flushed before she glared at Natalie and shrieked, “It’s all about money! That’s what you told me! She was just going to scare him and take his money.”
“That’s what she told me!” Natalie screamed back.
In the stunned silence that followed, I watched their poor mother. I saw every tic and tragic bit of Cherie’s terrible path to understanding.
She gaped at them in bewilderment. “You knew? You were a part of…”
“Mom,” Alicia said in a terrified voice. “Amelia showed us how Dad’s company screwed the poor people of Brazil. She told us we could begin to right that, that Dad deserved some punishment, and it would help the poor.”
Natalie said, “Mom, she made it sound like a good thing, a rebalancing.”
Cherie looked at her daughters like they were alien creatures.
“You betrayed your father because he made too much money?” she said. “You played judge and jury with your own dad? Sent him to his death?”
“No!” Natalie cried. “It wasn’t like that.”
Cherie lunged up and out of her chair. She slapped Natalie and backhanded Alicia. Lieutenant Acosta stepped in and restrained her. She went hysterical in his arms.
“It’s over,” she wept. “Everything is over.”
“Cherie, it’s not over.”
Cherie Wise didn’t hear and sobbed in grief and loss.
“Cherie, baby doll, I’m right here.”
A Private nurse pushed in a wheelchair bearing Andrew Wise. The billionaire sported a whopper of a bandage around his head and looked as weak as a newborn colt.
Cherie raised her head, saw her husband alive, and fainted dead away.
Chapter 81
AFTER MO-BOT GAVE her smelling salts, Cherie gazed at her husband in wonder and confusion. “You’re alive.”
“Thanks to Jack’s skills,” Wise said, holding her hand. “He shot her through the right side of her chest, spun her away from me before she pulled the trigger. Her bullet cut a bloody groove across my forehead.”
Cherie started to cry. “Why did you do this? Why did you torture me?”
For the first time, the billionaire turned his attention to his daughters, who wilted helplessly under his unblinking appraisal.
“Before she died, Amelia told me I’d been betrayed by my own girls. She said she wanted that to be my last thought.”
Natalie looked ready to disintegrate and Alicia began to weep. “What have we done? Oh my God, what have we done? She said it was all about money.”
The billionaire watched them without emotion, as if he were studying some interesting object in nature.
“Maybe you didn’t know Rayssa planned to shoot me,” Wise said at last. “So I forgive you for that.”
Natalie trembled, said, “Dad?”
“I’ve had some time to think,” he said, more to his wife than his daughters. “Amelia Lopes was right. I made too big a profit. It is time to give back. So I forgive the girls for that as well.”
Alicia tried to go to him, but Lieutenant Acosta stopped her, spun her around, and started putting handcuffs on her. “Alicia Wise, you are under arrest for conspiracy to kidnap and murder.”
“No,” she whined. “We didn’t kill anyone.”
“You participated in the murder of two of my people,” I said angrily. “Or have you forgotten the two bodyguards who died in the fake kidnapping?”
“We didn’t know that’s what was going to happen!” Natalie said as Acosta put her in cuffs as well. “Amelia kept us in the dark, said it would be better.”
Cherie had gotten enough strength to hold on to her husband as Acosta prepared to take their daughters away.
“Dad?” Natalie said. “You said you forgave us. Won’t you help us?”
“I’ll pay for your attorneys,” he said. “But I will testify against you.”
“So will I,” Cherie said, and she cried harder.
“Get them good lawyers,” Lieutenant Acosta said. “With all the media attention, they’re both going to wind up in prison. There’s no way around that now.”
Chapter 82
Friday, August 5, 2016
7:00 a.m.
Twelve Hours Before the Olympic Games Open