Chapter 4 - The Price on Her Head
The door opened three inches.
Saoirse couldn't move.
A woman stood outside.
Older.
Thin.
Gray threaded through dark hair that had once looked exactly like Saoirse's.
Then security guards appeared at the far end of the corridor.
The woman fled.
“Wait!”
Saoirse stepped after her.
Pain pulled across her abdomen.
Cesily woke.
“Saoirse!”
By the time they reached the corridor, the woman was gone.
Nikolai came running from the waiting room.
“What happened?”
Saoirse held up the medical record.
“My dead mother just spoke to me.”
For once, Nikolai had no answer.
Security footage showed the woman entering through a service stairwell.
Lucian arrived twenty minutes later.
He looked at the still image.
His face lost color.
“Maeve.”
“You're sure?”
“Yes.”
Saoirse sat rigidly.
“Then find her.”
Lucian nodded.
Nikolai objected.
“She approached Saoirse secretly. We don't know what she wants.”
“She called me by name.”
“So does everyone hunting you.”
Saoirse looked at him.
“You don't get a vote.”
The words landed.
Nikolai accepted them.
By morning, Saoirse was discharged with strict instructions to rest.
She refused the mansion.
Lucian offered three properties.
She rejected those too.
Cesily found a secure apartment owned by her law firm.
That became Saoirse's choice.
Lucian respected it.
Nikolai hated it.
He respected it anyway.
The next two days transformed everything.
The ledgers proved Brennan Maritime Trust had been stripped through fraudulent transfers engineered by Viktor Drevik and Pavel's father.
But another discovery mattered more.
Someone had recently begun purchasing those stolen assets back.
Quietly.
Through shell companies.
The beneficiary was Saoirse.
Nikolai.
For three years he had been rebuilding what his father stole.
It didn't erase Tess.
It didn't erase his lies.
But Tess's story changed that too.
She arrived at Cesily's office with two guards and no makeup.
“I was never sleeping with Nikolai.”
Saoirse watched her carefully.
“You allowed me to believe it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because Pavel watches everything.”
Tess's hands trembled.
“My baby is Pavel's. When I found the payments connected to your medical history, I copied them. He discovered what I'd done.”
“So Nikolai created a scandal.”
Tess nodded.
“If everyone believed he'd stolen Pavel's pregnant mistress, Pavel couldn't openly attack without confirming I mattered.”
Saoirse almost admired the insanity.
Almost.
“You could have told me.”
“I begged Nikolai to.”
That hurt.
“What did he say?”
“That the fewer people who knew, the safer you were.”
Saoirse laughed without humor.
“Of course.”
Tess looked ashamed.
“I told him you would hate him.”
“He was willing to accept that.”
“Apparently.”
Saoirse looked toward the window.
That was Nikolai's greatest flaw.
He could sacrifice anything.
Including himself.
Including her trust.
Without asking whether she wanted to pay the price.
Tess slid a flash drive across the table.
“These are Pavel's payments.”
Saoirse opened the files.
Two transactions corresponded to her miscarriages.
But the recipient wasn't her doctor directly.
It was a medical consulting company.
Cesily traced it.
The owner was Dr. Adrian Kessler.
Saoirse's former fertility specialist.
Her hands became numb.
“Did he cause my miscarriages?”
“We don't know,” Cesily said carefully.
Good.
Facts.
Not assumptions.
Saoirse needed facts.
“What does Pavel want now?”
Tess touched her belly.
“He thinks the Brennan ledgers contain proof that his father stole money from Viktor Drevik.”
“They do.”
“No.” Tess shook her head. “Something worse.”
She produced another document.
A life-insurance trust.
Beneficiary: Maeve Brennan.
Contingent beneficiary: Saoirse Brennan.
Asset: controlling shares in North Pacific Terminal Seven.
Lucian stared.
Terminal Seven controlled one of the most valuable routes in the harbor.
“That's why Pavel wants her,” he said.
Saoirse understood.
Not the key.
Not merely the ledgers.
Her signature.
The assets could revert to her if the fraudulent transfers were invalidated.
“I'm worth more alive than dead.”
“For now,” Lucian said.
Nikolai arrived moments later.
He and Lucian exchanged a look.
“What?” Saoirse demanded.
Nikolai placed his phone on the table.
A photograph showed Maeve bound to a chair.
Alive.
A newspaper dated that morning rested against her chest.
Pavel had her.
Below the photograph was a message.
BRING SAOIRSE AND BOX 317.
“No,” Nikolai said immediately.
Saoirse looked at him.
“I didn't ask.”
“You're not trading yourself.”
“You're still doing it.”
“Doing what?”
“Deciding.”
Nikolai fell silent.
Lucian looked at Saoirse.
“What do you want to do?”
She appreciated the question.
“I want my mother back.”
“Then we'll build options.”
Not orders.
Options.
For the next six hours they worked.
Cesily contacted federal investigators through a trusted intermediary.
Lucian mapped Pavel's known properties.
Nikolai supplied port access.
Tess identified the building visible behind Maeve.
An abandoned customs warehouse.
Saoirse noticed something in the photograph.
A clock.
3:17.
Again.
“Why does that number keep appearing?”
Lucian stared.
Then he went still.
“What?”
“My father died at 3:17.”
Nikolai looked at him.
“So did mine.”
Nobody spoke.
Tess whispered, “That's impossible.”
Saoirse opened the third ledger.
Near the back was an entry neither she nor Cesily had noticed.
March 17.
A meeting.
Terminal Seven.
Attendees listed only by initials.
V.D.
A.V.
M.B.
P.O.
And A.K.
Dr. Adrian Kessler.
Saoirse's doctor had been connected to their fathers decades before.
Her phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
A video arrived.
Maeve appeared on screen.
Bruised but conscious.
She looked directly into the camera.
“Saoirse, don't come for me. Pavel doesn't understand what happened on March seventeenth.”
A hand grabbed her hair.
The camera shook.
Before the video ended, Maeve shouted four words.
“Kessler delivered the babies!”
Babies.
Plural.
Then the screen went black.
A second message appeared immediately.
One photograph.
Two newborn infants.
May you like
And beneath them:
ASK LUCIAN WHICH ONE SURVIVED.
