Chapter 6 - THE TAPE HER MOTHER NEVER HEARD
Mason Flint lived exactly as Nora would have expected a man like him to live: in a cramped rowhouse full of old newspaper stacks, decaying filing cabinets, and the faint odor of nicotine soaked into history. He was in his sixties now, sharp-eyed, badly shaved, and unimpressed by armed men in tailored coats. Adrian went in through the front with Grant. Nora entered through the kitchen after checking the alley, because even engaged to one of the most dangerous men in Philadelphia, she still moved like a woman trained by necessity rather than entitlement. Flint looked at her first, not Adrian. Recognition flickered.
“You’re Clara’s girl.”
Nora’s chest tightened.
“You knew my mother.”
“I knew she was braver than most judges and smarter than most reporters.” Flint gestured toward a cassette player on the table. “You came for the tape.”
Vivienne’s recorded voice filled the kitchen in a dry whisper of old analog static. She spoke without drama, which made it worse. Lucien had turned the foundation into a channel for weapons and payoff money hidden beneath cultural philanthropy. She had confronted him after learning one shipment was tied to a retaliatory bombing that killed two dock workers. Clara had helped her hide records. Grant had seen enough to confirm Lucien’s presence the night the first fire started, though he had been too young and terrified to challenge his uncle publicly. Most importantly, Vivienne believed Lucien intended to bind the Wells family to the operation through marriage and joint maritime contracts. That piece made Adrian’s gaze cut to Nora. Caroline Wells had not merely been an obnoxious heiress circling a rich man; her family had been trying to fold itself into Adrian’s house.
The tape ended with one final warning. Vivienne had left a duplicate ledger page in the old service hallway wall, behind the plaster panel near the linen lift. If the bank records were found and destroyed, that panel would be enough to start prosecutions. Adrian and Nora looked at each other at the same instant. The service corridor again. The cheap frame had been a breadcrumb, not the whole trail.
They never made it back to the mansion quietly. Halfway down the drive, their convoy was forced to stop by a delivery truck angled across the private road. It was not a cinematic ambush. No one jumped out shooting. The danger was colder than that. In the forty seconds it took Adrian’s security to clear the truck, someone entered the rear car through the opposite side when Nora stepped out at Grant’s order. A gloved hand closed around her arm, another over her mouth, and for one brief terrifying second she was hauled backward into darkness that smelled like gasoline and cold metal.
The man did not get far. Nora drove her heel down, twisted exactly as the self-defense classes her mother once insisted on had taught her, and heard him curse. Then Adrian was there. He moved with brutal speed, dragging the attacker away from her and slamming him against the truck hard enough that the man’s hat fell off. It was one of Lucien’s house drivers. A man Nora had passed in the kitchen hallway almost every day for months.
The driver never looked at her. He looked at Adrian with terror.
“I was only supposed to scare her.”
Adrian’s grip tightened.
“Who told you?”
The man swallowed.
“Mr. Mercer.”
May you like
Everything stopped. Nora turned slowly. Grant stood three feet away, gun in hand, face unreadable under the headlights.
And then he said, very quietly, “He’s lying. Because if he says Lucien’s name, Lucien kills his wife before dawn.”
