Chapter 2 - The Ticket to 1998
My eyes scanned the elegant, sharp script on the card three times before my brain could process the words:
The song you chose was played on North End radio at 11:42 PM on October 14th, 1998. The shirt you wore bears the tailor's mark of a man who died that same night. You didn't just dance, Sadie. You re-enacted a crime scene. Sit down.
I stood frozen beside the long mahogany table, the silver coffee pot trembling in my hand. "Mr. Corsini, I swear on my life I don't know what you're talking about. The washing machine flooded, my key was trapped, I was cold, and the record was already on the turntable—"
"Sit down, Sadie," he repeated. His voice wasn't loud, but the quiet command in it had the weight of a falling anvil.
I slid into the high-backed leather chair opposite him, sitting on the very edge of the cushion. The morning light cut across his sharp cheekbones and the dusting of silver at his temples. Up close, Julian Corsini looked less like a corporate titan and more like a predator calculating the precise angle of a strike.
He leaned forward, lacing his long fingers together over his untouched plate. "For two months, someone has been infiltrating this house. My security system costs three million dollars. Martin Doyle's men are former Delta Force and Mossad. Yet someone walked past them five times and took five items."
"The tie clip, the matchbook, the cuff link, the record sleeve, and the train ticket," I managed to say, my throat dry as bone.
Julian's dark eyes narrowed slightly. "You know the inventory."
"Clara told me," I said quickly. "She said you've kept those items in locked cases for over twenty years."
"I kept them because they are evidence," Julian said quietly. "In 1998, I was twenty-three years old. My father was the head of the family, and I was... impulsive. On October 14th of that year, a vault beneath the Old South Meeting House was breached. Millions in bearer bonds were taken, along with something much more dangerous: a black ledger detailing every municipal bribe in the state of Massachusetts."
He stood up, walking toward the grand floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the misty gardens. "The man who took it was my uncle, Marco Corsini. That night, Marco was betrayed by his driver. A gunfight broke out on the docks. Marco died, the ledger vanished, and the only things left in the blood slick on the pier were those five trinkets."
I swallowed hard, trying to piece together the nightmare I had stumbled into. "Why keep them?"
"Because the man who betrayed my uncle wore a tailored white shirt, listened to Nina Simone on a portable radio while waiting in the getaway car, and held a ticket for the midnight train to Portland," Julian said, turning back to face me. "For twenty-three years, I collected those pieces from the evidence lockers my father bought off from the Boston Police Department. I waited for the traitor to come looking for them."
"And they did," I whispered. "The thief has been coming into this house to steal back the evidence."
"Except last night," Julian said, taking three slow steps toward my chair until he was standing directly over me. "The thief didn't come into the house. You put on that exact tailor's shirt—which was delivered to my dry cleaning mix-up three days ago from an anonymous boutique in South Boston. You chose the exact Nina Simone track from a crate of records that arrived at the house as an unrequested shipment last week. And you danced in the exact pattern of a woman attempting to trigger a hidden pressure plate under the drawing room floorboards."
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. "I was just spinning! I used to do ballet! I almost fell into the side table because I lost my balance—"
"The side table rests directly over the subfloor access hatch," Julian interrupted smoothly. "You didn't lose your balance, Sadie. You were positioned."
"I am a housekeeper!" I practically yelled, my fear finally giving way to desperate outrage. "I owe eighty thousand dollars in medical bills from my father’s cancer treatment! I took this job because you pay thirty-two dollars an hour and offer dental insurance! I don't know anything about bearer bonds, or murdered uncles, or pressure plates!"
Julian stared down at me for a long, suffocating minute. The silence in the sunlit room was terrifying. He was analyzing my body language, my dilated pupils, the tremor in my lower lip, the raw desperation in my voice.
Finally, he reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a sleek black smartphone, and pressed a button.
"Doyle," Julian said into the speaker. "Bring the floor plans for the drawing room. And call the garage—Ms. Quinn's uniform needs to be retrieved from the washing machine immediately. We are inspecting the pockets."
Julian ended the call and looked back down at me. "If you are telling the truth, Sadie, someone is using you as a puppet. They fed you the shirt, they placed the record, and they relied on your stress to drive you into that room last night."
May you like
He leaned down, placing both palms flat on the armrests of my chair, trapping me in his line of sight. The scent of cedarwood, espresso, and cold iron washed over me.
"And if you are lying to me," he whispered, his dark eyes burning into mine, "there isn't a court in Massachusetts that will ever find your body."
