Chapter 3 - The Price of a Date
The numbers mocked me in the dim light of the study.
My finger hovered over the first brass dial. The date your father died. Arthur’s voice echoed in my head, calm, challenging, entirely devoid of the desperation I had seen in the basement only hours ago. He wanted to see if I had the stomach for it. He wanted to see if I was truly Thomas Hayes’s daughter—a thief, a spy, a threat waiting to unravel his empire.
“I don’t want it,” I whispered, pulling my hand away as if the metal had burned me. I set the lockbox down heavily on the edge of the mahogany desk.
Arthur’s gaze didn’t leave my face. He reached out, his long fingers spinning the dials effortlessly until the latches clicked open with a sharp, metallic snap. He lifted the lid.
Inside wasn't a ledger of smuggled goods, nor was it a list of federal informants.
It was a stack of legal adoption papers, yellowed bank statements, and a single, handwritten letter addressed to Arthur Costello himself.
I stared down at the documents, completely disoriented. “What is this?”
“Your father wasn’t just working off a debt, Norah,” Arthur said, his voice dropping into a register so quiet it was almost painful. He picked up the handwritten letter and unfolded it. “Ten years ago, when he came to me begging for money, it wasn't for gambling. It was because your mother had died, and the state was about to put you and your younger sister into the foster system.”
My breath caught in my throat. “My... my sister? I don’t have a sister.”
“You did,” Arthur corrected, sliding the top paper across the desk toward me. “Her name was Lily. She was four years old. When your father came to me, he didn't ask for a loan to pay off bookies. He asked me to use my influence to forge adoption papers, to hide you both under new identities where my enemies couldn't use you as leverage against me.”
I looked down at the paper. My own name was at the top, crossed out with a code number, and beside it was another name I had never seen before.
“Why?” I choked out, the room spinning around me. “Why would you do that for him? You didn't even know him.”
“Because,” Arthur said, looking past me toward the harbor view outside the window, “ten years ago, I was losing my mind the exact same way I was losing it last night. I had just taken over my father’s syndicate. I was drowning in blood, terrified of my own shadow, wondering who was going to put a bullet in my back. Your father walked into my office, looked me dead in the eye, and told me that power wasn't worth losing your soul over.”
He turned back to me, his dark eyes burning with an intense, raw vulnerability that terrified me more than his anger ever could.
“He saved my life, Norah. And when he came to me asking to save his daughters, I gave him my word. But I failed. A week ago, someone found out about the arrangement. Someone inside this house tracked down where Lily was hidden.”
Arthur slammed the metal lid of the box shut, the noise ringing like a gunshot through the silent study.
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“And last night, when I killed my old friend, it wasn't because he found a double set of books,” Arthur said, his voice turning to ice. “It was because he was the one holding the knife to your sister’s throat.”
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