Chapter 4 - THE MAN MY FATHER TRUSTED
“What truth?”
Nikolai didn’t answer immediately.
I was beginning to hate his silences.
Not because they frightened me.
Because each one seemed to contain another part of my life everyone had decided I was too fragile to hear.
I held the photograph between us.
“What truth changes everything?”
“My connection to your father.”
“You already admitted you knew him.”
“I knew him better than that.”
“How much better?”
Nikolai looked toward the old camel coat.
“He saved my life.”
That was not the answer I expected.
“When?”
“I was twenty-eight.”
He crossed the room and pulled an old wooden chair from beneath the archive table.
He didn’t sit.
He placed it behind me instead.
My knees were grateful even if my pride wasn’t.
“Pier Nine was still operating then,” he continued. “My father was trying to force certain criminal businesses out of the port.”
I gave him a look.
“Your criminal businesses?”
“Some.”
At least he didn’t insult me with denial.
“Others belonged to men who were worse.”
“Comforting distinction.”
“It wasn’t meant to be comforting.”
I sat.
Nikolai remained standing.
“There was a fire aboard a docked freighter. Deliberate. Your father happened to be there meeting mine. He found me unconscious after an explosion and pulled me out.”
I looked at the photograph again.
“My father never told me.”
“He didn’t want you anywhere near us.”
“Yet six years ago he was standing beside you smiling.”
“People can distrust what a man represents and still trust the man.”
That sounded exactly like something my father would have believed.
Complex.
Annoying.
Human.
“So why was Mitchell there?”
Nikolai’s expression changed.
“Because by then your father suspected him.”
My stomach tightened.
“Of what?”
“Using your marriage to gain control of your inheritance.”
The air left my lungs.
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No.”
I stood so fast the chair scraped the floor.
“Mitchell had money before he met me.”
“Yes.”
“More money than my family.”
“Publicly.”
“He didn’t need—”
“Men like Mitchell rarely need what they take.”
The words hit too close to something I had spent years refusing to name.
I turned away.
My reflection in the dark window looked pale and small.
I hated that too.
“Did he marry me for money?”
“At first?”
Nikolai hesitated.
“I believe access to your father was part of the reason he pursued you.”
Part of the reason.
My wedding day flashed across my memory.
Mitchell waiting beneath white roses.
His hands shaking when he slid the ring onto mine.
The way he had whispered, You’re mine now, and I had once believed it sounded romantic.
I pressed a hand to my stomach.
“But?”
Nikolai’s voice softened.
“I also believe he loved you.”
I turned sharply.
“Why would you say that?”
“Because obsession is often built around something real. It does not make what he did to you acceptable.”
That answer hurt more than calling Mitchell a monster would have.
Monsters were simple.
Men were not.
I looked back at the coat.
“Why hide this photograph?”
“I don’t know.”
We searched again.
Inside the second sleeve, I found an old train ticket.
Grand Central to Poughkeepsie.
Five years ago.
The day before my father died.
On the back he had written a number.
Beside it was one word.
EVELYN.
My mother’s name.
Nikolai stared at it.
“That wasn’t in the file.”
“What file?”
He closed his eyes briefly.
Wrong answer.
“What file, Nikolai?”
“My father kept records on everyone connected to Pier Nine.”
“Including my parents?”
“Yes.”
“Including me?”
His silence answered.
My anger returned full force.
“You investigated me.”
“Not personally.”
“How reassuring.”
“I needed to know whether Mitchell had involved you.”
“You decided that without speaking to me.”
“You were his wife.”
“So?”
“So every approach I considered risked making your life worse.”
“You mean it risked your investigation.”
“No.”
For the first time, his voice sharpened.
“It risked you.”
I stopped.
He came no closer.
“Mitchell checked your phone records. Your credit cards. The mileage on your car. He had your driver reporting where you went.”
I felt suddenly cold.
“How do you know?”
“Because one of the men reporting to him was reporting to me.”
The room seemed to close around me.
All those years.
All those afternoons when Mitchell somehow knew I had stopped for coffee.
Every argument over an old college friend I had run into “by coincidence.”
Every time he knew I had talked to Tessa before I mentioned it.
I had blamed myself for being careless.
There had never been anything careless about it.
“You knew this was happening.”
“I knew some of it.”
“And you did nothing.”
His face hardened—not at me, but at himself.
“Your father made me promise.”
“To let Mitchell control me?”
“To stay away unless your physical safety was at risk.”
“He had no right.”
“No.”
“Neither did you.”
“No.”
The agreement came without defense.
It stole some of my anger because I wanted him to fight me.
“You should have told me.”
“Yes.”
“Years ago.”
“Yes.”
I stared at him.
“Stop agreeing with me.”
A faint, humorless smile touched his mouth.
“I don’t see the benefit of lying.”
“That hasn’t stopped you from withholding half my life.”
The smile vanished.
“You’re right.”
That was somehow worse.
I looked down at the train ticket again.
“Poughkeepsie.”
“My parents had a house there,” I said.
“Still in the family?”
“No. Mitchell convinced me to sell it after Dad died.”
Nikolai’s gaze sharpened.
“To whom?”
“I don’t know. A holding company.”
“Did Mitchell handle the sale?”
My mouth went dry.
“Yes.”
Nikolai pulled out his phone.
Not to make some mysterious call.
He opened a property database his company maintained and typed the old address.
Within seconds, the buyer appeared.
MERCER NORTH ASSET MANAGEMENT.
I stared at the screen.
“That’s Mitchell.”
“Yes.”
“He told me the buyer was a retired couple.”
Nikolai said nothing.
I thought about the ticket.
Grand Central.
Evelyn.
“My mother had a cedar jewelry box at that house.”
“What was in it?”
“Letters. Costume jewelry. Her rosary.”
“Where is it now?”
“I don’t know.”
I looked at Nikolai.
Then I knew.
Mitchell had bought my parents’ house through a shell company and never told me.
Not for the property.
For whatever my father had left there.
“We’re going to Poughkeepsie.”
Nikolai shook his head.
“Not tonight.”
“You don’t get to tell me—”
“There’s another problem.”
“What?”
He held up the photograph from the coat.
The back corner had peeled away.
Beneath the paper was a second, thinner image.
He carefully separated them.
It wasn’t another photograph.
It was a copy of a bank check.
One million dollars.
Paid to my father.
From Reed Holdings.
Dated three weeks before the picture was taken.
In the memo line, four typed words appeared:
FINAL PAYMENT — PIER NINE.
I stared at Nikolai.
“You paid my father a million dollars.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
May you like
His eyes stayed on mine.
“Because he was supposed to disappear.”
