Chapter 4
Her fingers tightened around the blanket.
“Victor contacted me two weeks ago.”
“How?”
“He left an envelope in my mailbox.”
“At the estate?”
“No. A post office box I keep in town.”
“Why do you have a post office box?”
She looked at me.
That was when I understood.
“So people can’t easily find where you live.”
“Yes.”
“And he did anyway.”
“Yes.”
“What did the letter say?”
“That he knew I was working for you.”
“What did he want?”
Claire inhaled slowly.
“A file.”
“What file?”
“I don’t have it.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
She closed her eyes.
“Something my husband left behind.”
I knew Claire was a widow.
Her employment paperwork listed her marital status that way.
I had never asked how her husband died.
I suddenly realized how little I knew about the woman who had lived under my roof for eight months.
“Your husband knew Victor?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“My husband’s name was Thomas Bennett.”
Something shifted in my memory.
Bennett.
The warehouse district.
Bennett Street.
I leaned back.
“Those warehouses.”
Claire nodded.
“They belonged to Thomas’s grandfather.”
The room seemed to become quieter.
“My father bought them twenty-two years ago.”
“Yes.”
“From the Bennett family.”
“Yes.”
I stared at her.
“You knew that when you applied to work here?”
“Yes.”
“And you thought that wasn’t worth mentioning?”
“I thought mentioning it would guarantee I never got the job.”
“Why did you want the job?”
She didn’t answer.
My patience thinned.
“Claire.”
“To find out what happened.”
“To whom?”
“To Thomas.”
That answer changed everything.
I glanced at Lily.
Still asleep.
“What happened to your husband?”
“He died four years ago.”
“I know that.”
“No. You know what the paperwork says.”
Her eyes met mine.
“Thomas died after spending nearly a year trying to understand why Victor Kane wanted those warehouses back.”
“Back?”
“Victor believes something inside one of them belongs to him.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
I stood and walked to the window.
Outside, September rain streaked the glass.
Beyond it, the estate grounds disappeared into darkness.
Three days earlier Victor Kane had sat across from me and offered nearly double market value for buildings I had barely thought about in ten years.
I had assumed redevelopment.
Land assembly.
Maybe some tax arrangement.
Victor had spoken for twenty minutes about waterfront revitalization.
Every sentence had sounded polished.
Every sentence, I now realized, had been designed to prevent me from asking the simplest question.
Why these buildings?
I turned around.
“You came here to investigate my family.”
Claire’s face tightened.
“I came here because Thomas left me a note with your father’s name in it.”
There it was.
The part I had been expecting.
My father.
It always came back to him.
“What did the note say?”
“I don’t have it anymore.”
“Claire.”
“I memorized it.”
“Then tell me.”
She hesitated.
Then quietly recited:
“If anything happens to me, don’t trust what Victor says about the Bennett property. Moretti kept his promise. The answer is where my grandfather said nobody would think to look.”
My throat tightened.
“Moretti kept his promise.”
“Yes.”
“You assumed that meant my father?”
“Who else?”
I almost laughed.
May you like
Not because it was funny.
Because my father, Lorenzo Moretti, had made promises to hundreds of men. Some he kept. Some he broke. Some he kept in ways that ruined everyone involved.
