Part 5: The Audit of the Custom House
## Part 5: The Custom House Foundation
The voice that came through the speaker didn't sound like a queen anymore.
It sounded thin, broken, and completely stripped of the old-money arrogance that had defined the Newport altar.
"Cora... please," Marguerite whispered, the static of the prison line roaring behind her breath.
"Theodore is in the medical wing. His jaw is fractured in two places. The doctors say he needs specialized surgery, but the hospital won't clear the insurance card because the corporate accounts are frozen."
"Tell Liam to open the South End gate for just one hour."
"We have two cargo ships from Amsterdam idling outside the channel."
"If those containers aren't unloaded by midnight, the Dutch syndicate will take the house in Greenwich."
I looked at the silver lace shuttle in my lap.
"The house in Greenwich was purchased with a loan from my mother's trust fund, Marguerite," I said softly.
"The trust your husband called a 'secondhand attic find'."
"You can stay in the cells until the Dutch arrive."
I hung up the phone before she could find another lie.
Liam shifted the SUV into drive, the heavy tires crushing the wet gravel as we moved toward the old custom house terminal.
The building was a monolith of gray granite, built in the nineteenth century to watch over the wealth of the Boston merchants.
The third floor was a massive, vaulted loft with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the deep water channels.
In the center of the room sat a single, narrow mahogany table beneath a bank of warm, specialized restoration lamps.
My table.
My needles.
My cotton gloves were already laid out in a perfect row beside a bottle of distilled water and a magnifying lens.
"Your workspace is secure, Cora," Liam said, standing by the iron door frame.
"My men will stay at the lower gate twenty-four hours a day."
"The Ashfords think they can use their local connections to stall the bankruptcy, but the federal judge is a close friend of my father’s."
"They have exactly till Friday to sign the total asset waiver."
I walked over to the table, my fingers touching the cold surface of the mahogany.
The twenty-four pieces of his mother’s lace were already laid out beneath the glass sheets, the torn edges looking like broken white wings under the warm light.
"It will take four months to align the central medallion, Liam," I said, not looking back at him.
"The stitches are a variable cipher."
"Your mother didn't just weave a pattern; she hid a sequence in the length of the silk."
Liam walked over, his long coat casting a heavy shadow across the glass.
"What kind of sequence?" he asked.
"The routing codes for the private vessels that left Sicily in 1974," I whispered, pointing the lens at the tiny stars woven into the vinework.
"The ones the Italian government has been searching for since the corporate collapse."
"Marguerite didn't cut the veil because she hated my breeding, Liam."
"She cut it because she found out your father had sent the ledger to my studio for verification."
"She was trying to destroy the evidence before the SEC completed the quarterly audit."
Suddenly, the heavy iron door of the loft didn't just swing open.
It clicked with a sharp, digital hiss as the primary security code was bypassed from the outside terminal.
May you like
The elevator indicators turned red.
Someone was coming up from the main terminal floors, and they had used my grandfather’s old master key to open the shaft.
