Chapter 9 - The Silver Pocket Watch
The metal case of the pocket watch caught the white beam of my phone, throwing a cold, metallic glare against the dusty concrete sides of the pit.
I didn't reach for it. I looked sideways at Julian.
The color had drained entirely from his face, leaving the pale line of his scar looking like a streak of white ash across his skin. For the first time since I met him in Row 9 of the symphony hall, Julian Romano looked genuinely, undeniably shaken.
"That's yours," I whispered.
Julian didn't answer immediately. He stared down at the watch, his breathing slowing until the silence in the small back room felt heavy enough to crush glass.
"My father's," he said finally, his voice rough and stripped of its usual authority.
"Your father died ten years ago," I said, my heart pounding against my ribs. "In a freight elevator accident down at the harbor. The police called it structural failure."
"The police called it a lot of things," Julian said quietly. He reached down into the pit, his large fingers bypassing the steel lockbox entirely, lifting the silver pocket watch by its chain. He turned it over in his palm. The back was engraved with a set of initials: V.R.
"Vincenzo Romano," I said, remembering the old newspaper clippings my father kept in a shoebox under his bed. "Your uncle. The one who ran the docks before you took over."
"He didn't run the docks, Sophie," Julian said, his eyes fixed on the silver casing. "He owned them. And he didn't die in an elevator accident."
Vance stepped quietly into the back room from the front of the shop, his footsteps soft against the floorboards. He looked down into the open pit, his face expressionless behind his rimless glasses.
"The accident report was filed by municipal engineering in 2016," Vance said smoothly. "Signed off by the city prosecutor and countersigned by your father, Mr. Romano. It was considered closed."
Julian slowly closed his hand around the watch, the silver chain slipping between his knuckles like water. He looked up at Vance, and the look in his eyes made even the counselor take a half-step backward.
"My uncle didn't sign the transfer of the Pier 14 deeds over to the city," Julian said, his voice dropping into a deadly, quiet hum. "And he didn't die in an elevator. He was locked in one while the cables were cut."
I stared at Julian, the room spinning slightly around us. "What does that have to do with my father?"
Julian turned his gaze back to me, the darkness in his eyes softened by something jagged and painful.
"Your father was the only man on the waterfront who refused to sign the false accident report," Julian said softly. "Vance told him the docks would be closed, the Taylor Street shops would be condemned, and every family on this block would be out on the street within forty-eight hours if he didn't put his name on the manifest."
I looked down at the steel lockbox in the pit. "So he signed it. And spent the next ten years collecting the real deeds, hiding them piece by piece under the floorboards."
"He kept the truth safe," Julian corrected, standing up slowly and brushing the dust from his knees. "He waited until he found someone who could finish the audit without getting buried in the harbor."
Vance adjusted his glasses, his lips thinning into a dangerous line. "If those deeds come to light, Romano, the city council will seize every square foot of the West Side before sunrise. And Miss Carter's bookstore will be the first property bulldozed for the new transit terminal."
Julian didn't look at Vance. He looked down at me, his hand resting on the edge of the open floor safe.
May you like
"The choice is yours, Sophie," Julian said, his voice steady. "We lift the lockbox out right now, hand the deeds to Vance's committee, and the city takes everything your father spent his life protecting. Or we keep the box closed, walk out the front door, and finish what Michael Carter started on his own terms."
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