Part 15: The Meeting on the Stern
## Part 15: The Meeting on the Stern
The teak deck of The White Orchid was smooth and warm under my shoes.
The cabin doors were open, a yellow light glowing from the interior lounge, smelling of expensive cigars, scotch, and the same bay rum aftershave my father used to wear when he came home from the ports.
A man sat at the mahogany console, his back to me, his white hair longer than it had been in the old family photographs.
"You're late, Cora," he said.
He didn't turn around.
He took a slow sip from a crystal lowball glass.
"I had to execute a bankruptcy filing for your partners in Newport, Dad," I said, my voice cutting through the hum of the boat's air conditioning.
Julian Rossi slowly turned the leather chair to face me.
He was sixty-five, his face lined by years of Caribbean sun and cheap hiding places, but his eyes were the same dark, intelligent green that looked back at me every morning in the mirror.
"You look like your mother," he murmured, his eyes scanning my navy suit.
"She always did like a clean ledger."
"Don't talk about my mother," I said, stopping three feet from his console.
"You left her to die in a state ward while you were wiring two million dollars to a cosmetic clinic for Marguerite Ashford’s daughter."
Julian sighed, a short, tired sound that made him look like an old draftsman who had run out of paper.
"The Ashfords had the original manifests for The Sovereign, Cora," he said, leaning forward.
"If I didn't pay for Priscilla's lifestyle, Philip would have handed my name to the Italian syndicates within twenty-four hours."
"I did what I had to do to keep the Rossi legacy alive."
"You used me as a dead-drop, Dad," I said, placing the silver shuttle on the console right over his navigation map.
"You let Theodore crush my work because you wanted to see if Arthur Vance would send his son to protect the weave."
"You needed the Vance family to open the deep-water slots in Boston so the gold could enter the country without a federal inspection."
He looked at the silver shuttle, his fingers trembling as he realized what I was holding.
"You have the verification code?" he whispered, his eyes widening with an insatiable greed.
"The fourteen-digit alphanumeric string?"
"I have the code, Julian," I said softly.
"But it didn't clear the Rotterdam accounts into your name."
May you like
"It cleared them into mine."
"And the federal marshals are currently standing at the foot of your boarding ramp."
