Chapter 1 - The Weight of Wood and Memory
The library had not changed since Isabelle died. That was the cruelty of it. A man who could reshape the docks, buy judges, and silence district attorneys found himself utterly powerless against a roll-top walnut desk and two rows of poetry books.
Olivia climbed up onto the window seat with an easy familiarity that made my chest ache. Sophie and Nora followed, crowding into the corner where Isabelle used to sit with her legs curled beneath her skirts, reading aloud from leather-bound volumes she had collected during winters in Providence.
Grace remained standing near the door, her hands folded over the apron she had tied around her waist. She looked out of place in the grand room, yet completely at home with my children. That contradiction irritated me in a way I couldn't articulate.
"Which picture, Sophie?" I asked, keeping my voice lower than usual.
Olivia reached out and tapped the glass of a heavy mahogany-framed photograph sitting on the side table. It was a picture of Isabelle taken on our fifth wedding anniversary, standing by the iron gates of our estate in Roslyn.
"That was taken three weeks before she died," I said.
"She wasn't smiling," Nora whispered.
The three words dropped into the room like lead weights.
I stared at my youngest daughter. For fourteen months, I had begged for a sound—any sound—and now her voice sounded like glass breaking on stone.
"She was smiling," I argued, taking a step toward the table. "Look at her mouth. She’s laughing at something I said."
"She was scared," Olivia said.
The oldest. Six years old when her world stopped. Now seven, and looking at me with an ancient, terrifying clarity.
"Scared of what, Liv?" I asked, using the nickname I hadn't dared say aloud since the funeral.
Olivia looked at Grace.
Grace did not look back at the girls. She looked at me, her gray eyes steady, hard, and entirely devoid of the deference everyone else in my employ managed to maintain even when they were terrified.
"Mr. Romano," Grace said quietly. "You spent twenty years building a fortress to keep your enemies outside those gates. You never bothered to look at who was already sitting at your dining table."
"What are you talking about?"
"Ask your head of security," Grace replied, her voice dropping an octave. "Ask Mr. Moretti who visited Isabelle forty-eight hours before her car wouldn't start."
The name hit me like a physical blow.
Moretti.
Not a rival family.
My own blood.
My cousin Vincent, whom I had trusted with the Brooklyn import docks for a decade, who had sat at this very desk drinking my scotch, who had stood beside my wife’s coffin with his head bowed and a tear on his cheek.
May you like
"Vincent," I breathed.
"He didn't want the docks," Grace said, walking slowly toward the desk. She reached behind the heavy walnut paneling beneath the lowest shelf—a compartment I had installed myself for emergency cash and bearer bonds—and pulled out a small, flat metal drive. "He wanted the books. And Isabelle found them first."
