Chapter 3 - The Forty-Eighth Hour
Dante raised his weapon.
The bathroom door opened another inch.
Maeve held her breath.
A terrified housekeeper stumbled out.
"Mr. Falcone!"
Dante lowered the gun.
The woman was Elena, one of the few longtime employees.
"What happened?"
"I saw someone leaving Miss O'Connell's room."
"Who?"
"A man."
"Which way?"
"Service stairs."
Nico and Luca were already moving.
Maeve searched the destroyed room.
"My cookbook."
"What cookbook?" Dante asked.
"My mother's."
Maeve dropped to her knees beside the overturned nightstand.
Gone.
The key was gone with it.
Then she noticed something beneath the bed.
A torn page.
She pulled it free.
It contained Kathleen's handwritten recipe for Irish soda bread.
Nothing unusual.
Until Maeve turned it over.
Numbers covered the back.
Account numbers.
Dates.
Initials.
Dante took one look.
"The ledger."
"This is a recipe."
"No. It's a cipher."
Kathleen had hidden financial records inside recipes.
Maeve suddenly understood why her mother guarded that battered cookbook for years.
And someone else understood too.
The intruder escaped before Luca could catch him.
At exactly nine the next morning, Maeve passed forty-eight hours.
Nico appeared in the kitchen holding a stopwatch.
Maeve stared.
"Are you kidding?"
"New record."
Luca walked in carrying champagne.
"It's nine in the morning."
"So?"
Maeve laughed despite herself.
Dante entered last.
He placed a new cookbook on the counter.
Maeve's smile disappeared.
"We'll recover hers."
She touched the blank cover.
"You don't know that."
"No."
For once, Dante didn't pretend certainty.
"But we'll try."
That mattered.
More than Maeve wanted it to.
Over the next several days, Falcone Manor changed.
Security doubled.
Maeve was forbidden from leaving alone.
She objected loudly.
Dante ignored her loudly by being completely silent.
Yet strange domestic routines developed around the danger.
Nico began appearing for breakfast at seven.
Luca complained whenever Maeve burned toast, then ate it anyway.
Dante drank coffee at the island instead of inside his office.
Three feared men who had terrified dozens of employees gradually became three brothers arguing about who stole the last piece of bacon.
Maeve saw pieces of them outsiders never did.
Luca called their elderly aunt every evening.
Nico rescued an injured bird from the courtyard and pretended he hadn't.
Dante checked every door personally before sleeping.
They weren't harmless.
Maeve never forgot that.
But they weren't monsters either.
They were men raised inside danger who had learned to resemble it.
And Kathleen had known them as boys.
One evening Dante showed Maeve an old photograph.
Kathleen sat on the manor steps with teenage Dante beside her.
"She saved us," he said.
"How?"
"Our father became violent after our mother died. Kathleen got us out whenever it was bad."
Maeve swallowed.
"My mother never talked about this place."
"She wanted you away from it."
"Then someone sent me straight back."
Dante's expression darkened.
"Yes."
They eventually decoded the torn recipe page.
It referenced a safety deposit box in Boston.
Maeve recognized the bank.
Her mother had taken her there once.
Dante arranged a private flight.
Maeve refused.
"I'm driving."
"Absolutely not."
"I hate flying."
"Hale wants you."
"And turbulence wants everyone."
Nico laughed so hard he left the room.
They drove.
At the bank, Maeve presented Kathleen's brass key—but the bank manager told them the box had been emptied eleven years earlier.
"By whom?" Dante asked.
The manager checked archived records.
"Kathleen O'Connell."
Maeve stared.
"She was dead."
The withdrawal had occurred three days after Kathleen's funeral.
Someone had used her mother's identity.
Security footage no longer existed.
But the signature card did.
Maeve recognized the handwriting.
Not Kathleen's.
Someone had forged it.
Then Dante noticed the witness signature.
E. MARINO.
"Elena," he whispered.
Maeve looked at him.
"The housekeeper?"
Dante called the manor.
No answer.
Again.
Nothing.
Finally Nico reached a guard.
His face changed while listening.
"What happened?" Maeve demanded.
Nico lowered the phone.
"Elena's gone."
"Where?"
"Nobody knows."
Dante looked at the signature again.
Then the bank manager returned carrying an archived envelope.
"There's something else. The person who emptied the box left this behind with instructions that it be given to Maeve O'Connell if she ever came personally."
Maeve opened it.
Inside was a photograph of her mother taken after her supposed death.
May you like
Kathleen was standing beside Elena.
And between them stood Victor Hale.
