Chapter 2 - The Man Nikolai Feared
Saoirse read the message twice.
Then she looked at Lucian.
“You knew my mother?”
“Yes.”
“Nikolai knew?”
Lucian didn't answer quickly enough.
Her stomach turned.
“Nikolai knew.”
“I don't know how much.”
“That wasn't my question.”
“Yes.”
The word hollowed something inside her.
Saoirse took the phone from Cesily.
“Can it be traced?”
“Probably not,” Lucian said.
“I asked Cesily.”
Lucian gave the smallest nod and stepped back.
Cesily examined it.
“No identifying marks. Cheap prepaid model.”
“Then someone entered your office.”
“Apparently.”
Lucian looked toward the hallway.
His men were already moving.
Saoirse hated how quickly violence seemed to organize itself around powerful men.
“No one gets hurt because of me.”
Lucian's gaze returned to her.
“That depends on the person who put the phone here.”
“No. It depends on what you order.”
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Then Lucian said, “Fair.”
He called toward the door.
“Search. Don't touch anyone.”
Saoirse noticed Cesily watching him.
That single correction mattered.
She didn't want it to.
“What does 317 mean?” Saoirse asked.
Lucian pulled out a chair.
“Sit.”
“No.”
“You're thirty-one weeks pregnant and you've been standing through contractions.”
“I said they're harmless.”
“And I believe you. Sit anyway.”
She almost refused purely because he had suggested it.
Then her back tightened.
Saoirse sat.
Lucian remained standing.
“Box 317 belonged to Maeve Brennan.”
“My mother?”
“Yes.”
“What was she doing with Nikolai's family?”
“She wasn't working for the Dreviks.”
“Then why did Nikolai recognize the number?”
“Because his father spent twenty-two years trying to find that box.”
Saoirse stared at the key.
Her mother had supposedly died in Ireland when Saoirse was three.
Her father had raised her in Canada.
There had been photographs.
A death certificate.
A grave.
Yet suddenly a brass key she had received after her father's death connected Maeve Brennan to the Drevik empire.
“How did my father get this?”
“I don't know.”
“Convenient.”
“It isn't.”
Lucian leaned forward.
“I've spent seventeen years trying to answer that question.”
Seventeen.
Saoirse studied him.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“No. I expect you to verify everything yourself.”
That answer disarmed her more than insistence would have.
Lucian slid the photograph closer.
“Maeve was a forensic accountant.”
Saoirse's fingers became still.
So was she.
“She investigated port companies?”
“Yes.”
“My father told me she taught music.”
“He lied to keep you alive.”
Saoirse looked away.
Too many men.
Too many lies supposedly told for her benefit.
“And Nikolai?”
“Ask him.”
“I did. He asked about the bank.”
Lucian's jaw shifted.
For the first time, something resembling anger appeared.
Not at her.
At Nikolai.
“What is inside Box 317?” she asked.
“I've never opened it.”
“Pavel thinks you have.”
“Pavel thinks Maeve documented a network that predates all of us.”
Cesily sat opposite Saoirse.
“What kind of network?”
“Shell companies. Bribed customs officials. Judges. Politicians. Port executives. Organized crime groups that publicly hated one another while privately sharing routes.”
“And the ownership documents?” Saoirse asked.
“Could show who actually controls assets currently registered to Drevik companies.”
Saoirse thought of the records she had spent years reviewing.
Little inconsistencies.
Subsidiaries acquired too cheaply.
Properties with unusual historical transfers.
Signatures that never quite matched.
She had questioned them.
Nikolai had always produced explanations.
She suddenly felt sick.
Lucian noticed.
“Water?”
“No.”
“Saoirse.”
“No.”
She stood.
“I want to go to the bank.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes.”
“It isn't safe.”
Her eyes hardened.
“Option, not decision. Remember?”
A faint expression crossed Lucian's face.
Approval, perhaps.
“Then I'll tell you the risks.”
He did.
No manipulation.
No theatrical warnings.
The bank's private vault facility operated twenty-four hours for select clients. Pavel's people might be watching. Nikolai almost certainly was.
Lucian could provide security.
Or she could wait.
Or Cesily could request a court-supervised opening in the morning.
Saoirse listened.
Then chose.
“We go tonight.”
Cesily protested.
Lucian didn't.
Thirty minutes later, Saoirse sat in the rear of an armored sedan.
Lucian sat opposite rather than beside her.
That distance felt intentional.
“Why does Nikolai fear you?” she asked.
“He doesn't.”
“Everybody fears something.”
Lucian looked through the window.
“He fears what I know.”
“About my mother?”
“Partly.”
“And the rest?”
His gaze returned.
“Ask your husband why our fathers stopped doing business together.”
“I'm finished asking Nikolai questions.”
“That may be difficult.”
“Why?”
Lucian looked at his phone.
“Because he's following us.”
Saoirse turned.
A black SUV remained three vehicles behind.
She recognized it immediately.
Nikolai's.
Her pulse quickened.
“He doesn't get to stop me.”
“I agree.”
The bank appeared ahead.
Security admitted them through an underground entrance.
Lucian's men remained outside the vault corridor.
So did Lucian.
Saoirse noticed.
“You're not coming?”
“It's your box.”
“You spent seventeen years searching for it.”
“Yes.”
“And you're staying here?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
His answer was simple.
“Because it belongs to you.”
For the first time that night, Saoirse didn't know what to say.
She entered with Cesily.
Box 317 was larger than expected.
The brass key turned smoothly.
Inside were three leather ledgers.
A sealed envelope.
A cassette tape.
An old photograph.
And a birth certificate.
Saoirse reached for the certificate first.
Her hands began trembling.
NAME: SAOIRSE MAE BRENNAN.
Mother: Maeve Brennan.
Father—
The space was blank.
“What?”
Cesily leaned closer.
Saoirse opened the envelope.
One line had been written in her mother's handwriting.
If my daughter is reading this, then Viktor Drevik failed to destroy the truth.
Saoirse's heart pounded.
Nikolai's father.
Below that:
Trust the original ledger. Trust no Drevik claim of ownership.
The vault door opened behind them.
Saoirse spun around.
Nikolai stood there.
Alone.
His hair was wet from the rain.
His expression was unlike anything she had ever seen.
Fear.
“Saoirse,” he said. “Don't read the next page.”
She slowly opened the first ledger.
A photograph slipped out.
It showed Maeve holding a newborn.
Beside her stood Viktor Drevik.
May you like
And beneath the photograph was a handwritten line:
Saoirse's father is...
