“From whom?”
“We never found out.”
“What happened after he arrived?”
“The ship caught fire.”
Bailey stared at her.
“Was my mother aboard?”
“Yes.”
“How did she survive?”
“Stefan pulled her from the water.”
The scar through his eyebrow.
Bailey remembered how it cut across his face, pale and uneven.
“Was he injured?”
“Burned. Cut by broken glass. He nearly drowned.”
“Why didn’t the commission know she survived?”
“Because Stefan told them he found her body.”
Bailey understood then why her father disliked him.
Stefan had not merely hidden Evelyn.
He had become the keeper of her second life.
A soft knock came at the open door.
Stefan stood in the hall.
“We’re ready.”
Mara rose and moved past him without speaking.
Bailey gathered the ledger and letter, then paused.
“Did you hear us?”
“Enough.”
“What happened to the investigator?”
“He disappeared.”
“Was he ever found?”
“No.”
Bailey placed the ledger inside the leather folder.
“And Bellweather?”
Stefan’s expression became distant.
“The fire was not meant to kill your mother.”
“How can you know that?”
“Because the cabin was searched before it burned. Someone wanted the ledger.”
Bailey looked at the black book.
“And she kept it all these years?”
“No.”
A quiet tension entered his voice.
“She told me the ledger was lost in the fire.”
Bailey looked down.
“Then how did it end up inside the contract?”
“That,” Stefan said, “is what I hoped you could tell me.”
They left the manor shortly before midnight.
No convoy followed them. No dramatic line of vehicles cut through the rain.
Bailey rode in the back seat of a plain company sedan beside Stefan, while Mara drove. Two Smith Shipping managers followed in a second car, summoned under the explanation of an emergency property inspection.
The city thinned around them.
Warehouses replaced houses. Streetlights grew farther apart. Beyond the glass, cargo cranes stood against the clouds like enormous motionless birds.
Bailey had passed the old customs house many times but had not entered since childhood.
It stood at the edge of the harbor, a long brick building with arched windows and a clock tower that had stopped at 4:17.
The rain had softened to mist.
A security guard waited beneath the entrance canopy. He looked alarmed by Bailey’s arrival and more alarmed when she introduced herself as the new controlling owner of Smith Shipping.
Inside, the air smelled of damp wood and old paper.
Their footsteps echoed across the tiled floor.
The building seemed smaller than Bailey remembered, yet certain details remained unchanged: brass railings worn smooth by generations of hands, faded signs pointing toward customs offices, a painted compass in the center of the lobby.
One of the managers began discussing insurance liabilities.
Bailey barely heard him.
The key felt warm in her palm.
“Where were the private boxes?” she asked.
The security guard pointed toward the rear stairs.
“Basement level. But that section was sealed after the flood.”
“There was no flood,” Bailey said.
The guard looked confused.
“My father said there was.”
“No, ma’am. Pipe burst in the west storage room, but the private vault was untouched.”
Stefan glanced at her.
Another lie from Alaric.
They descended into the basement.
The walls narrowed around them, lined with old green tiles. At the end of the corridor stood a steel door beneath a sign that read AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.