Chapter 5 - THE POCKET WATCH
The heavy silver pocket watch rested perfectly in the center of the white sheets, gleaming coldly under the recessed bedroom lights.
My hands shook so violently I couldn’t reach for it. My nephew, the boy I had sworn to protect with my life, had been pulled from his bed while I sat just twenty feet away.
“How did he get in?” I gasped, tears burning my eyes as I backed away from the bed. “You said the elevator was biometric! You said this floor was perfectly secure!”
Adrian didn’t answer. His face had gone entirely pale. He walked to the bed, staring at the pocket watch as if it were a venomous snake. He didn’t touch it.
“Adrian,” I cried, grabbing his forearm, forcing him to look at me. “How did someone get into this room?”
“They didn’t,” Adrian whispered, his dark eyes meeting mine. The absolute horror in his gaze was more terrifying than his anger had ever been. “They were already here.”
He pointed to the heavy, iron-wrought ventilation grate near the ceiling of the master closet. The screws had been silently removed, the grate resting delicately against the wall. Someone had been waiting in the ductwork of the penthouse. Waiting for us.
“Elias,” I sobbed, my knees threatening to give out. “He has Leo. We have to go after him! Call Marcus! Call your men!”
“It wasn’t Elias,” Adrian said, his voice dropping into a lethal, terrifying calm. He reached down and finally picked up the silver pocket watch. He held it out so I could see the engraving on the cover.
It was the Voss family lion, but it was split down the middle by a deep, deliberate scratch.
“Elias doesn’t fit in ventilation shafts,” Adrian explained, turning the watch over in his large hand. “He’s six-foot-four and two hundred and fifty pounds. And this watch didn’t belong to my brother.”
“Then whose is it?” I demanded, panic making my voice shrill.
“It belongs to Julian,” Adrian stated.
The name hit me like a physical blow. Julian. The underboss. The man who had been sitting next to Adrian during the meeting. The man who had laughed when I threatened the pipe with my mop.
“Julian is your right hand,” I stammered.
“Julian is a traitor,” Adrian corrected, his jaw locking so tight I could see the muscle feathering beneath his skin. “He’s the one who gave Elias the security codes. He’s the one who broke the pipe in the guest suite tonight to create a distraction during the meeting so the perimeter guards would look the wrong way. He’s been working with my dead brother this entire time.”
Adrian pressed the latch on the side of the pocket watch. The silver lid popped open.
There was no clock face inside. The mechanics had been hollowed out. Instead, resting inside the silver casing was a tightly rolled piece of paper and a single, tiny memory card.
Adrian unrolled the paper.
“The ledger for the boy. Midnight. Union Station, Locker 402. Come alone, Adrian. Or the kid burns.”
I stared at the note, the words blurring as tears spilled over my eyelashes. “The ledger? What ledger? We don’t have a ledger!”
“Elias believes we do,” Adrian said, his mind racing, pulling the memory card from the watch. He walked quickly out to the living room, grabbed his encrypted laptop from the desk, and slid the card in.
A single audio file popped up on the screen. Adrian clicked play.
The sound of my sister Clara’s voice filled the penthouse.
“If you’re listening to this, Elias, it means you finally figured it out,” Clara’s voice crackled through the speakers. She sounded exhausted, terrified, but fiercely defiant. “I know you orchestrated the bombing. I know you killed the old Don. And I know you used me to empty the safe. But you won’t get the ledger. I hid it where you will never, ever find it. It’s with the one thing in this world you consider worthless.”
The audio file ended.
I stood frozen in the center of the living room, the cashmere blanket slipping from my shoulders. Clara. Hearing her voice after three years felt like someone was tearing my heart straight out of my chest.
“She knew,” I whispered. “Clara knew Elias was a monster. She was trying to stop him.”
“She took the ledger,” Adrian said, staring at the black screen of the laptop. “My father’s master ledger. It has the account numbers, the transit routes, the blackmail files on every politician in Chicago. Elias needs it to take back the syndicate. He can’t rule without it. Clara stole it to leverage her safety, but he killed her before she could trade it.”
“She didn’t trade it because she was protecting Leo!” I realized, the pieces finally locking into a horrific puzzle in my mind. “She hid it to keep him safe.”
“Maya,” Adrian said, walking toward me, his hands gently gripping my shoulders. “Think. Clara said she hid it with the one thing Elias considered worthless. What did she give you before she died? A safety deposit key? A document?”
“Nothing!” I cried, shaking my head violently. “We had nothing! She left me a box of old sweaters and her jewelry box! That’s it!”
Adrian’s eyes darted down to my apron pocket, where I had shoved the heavy silver braided bracelet after our argument in the study.
“The bracelet,” Adrian breathed.
I reached into my pocket, my fingers trembling as I pulled out the heavy, tarnished silver jewelry. “You said she stole this from your mother.”
“Elias hated my mother,” Adrian explained rapidly, taking the bracelet from my hands. “He thought she was weak. He considered her family heirlooms garbage. Clara knew that.”
Adrian held the heavy bracelet up to the light. He gripped the thick silver braids and twisted the metal in opposite directions.
With a soft click, the heavy clasp popped entirely off, revealing that the thick silver tubing of the bracelet was completely hollow.
Adrian tipped it upside down over his palm.
A tiny, tightly rolled piece of microfilm fell out. The master ledger.
“She hid it in plain sight,” Adrian whispered in awe. “She wore the ledger around her wrist, and when she died, you wore it in your pocket. You’ve been carrying the keys to the Chicago underworld for three years, Maya.”
My knees went weak. I had carried this bracelet every single day. I had worn it while scrubbing floors, while paying for cheap groceries with loose change, while tucking Leo into bed.
“We have it,” I sobbed, a desperate, wild hope flaring in my chest. “We have the ledger. We can trade it for Leo.”
May you like
Adrian looked at the microfilm, then up at me. The lethal, cold mob boss was back, but this time, he was entirely focused on protecting my family.
“We aren’t trading anything,” Adrian said, his voice vibrating with absolute, terrifying violence. “Julian is expecting a broken man to show up and surrender. But I’m going to Union Station, and I’m going to kill every single person standing between me and that boy.”
