Chapter 3 - The Man at Table Seven
I agreed to protection under three conditions.
No one entered my apartment without permission.
No one touched my phone.
And no one called me sweetheart.
Lucian accepted all three with the solemnity of a treaty negotiation.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“Yes. Stop looking amused.”
“That one may be difficult.”
I hated that I liked his answer.
Marco assigned a woman named Talia Reyes to me. Talia was thirty-something, compact, observant, and wore a gray wool coat that did not scream private security. She introduced herself by saying, “I will not follow you into bathrooms unless somebody is already trying to kill you.”
“Comforting.”
“I try.”
We spent the afternoon at my apartment while I applied for three waitressing jobs and pretended there was not a trained guard reading a paperback beside my radiator.
At four, somebody slid an envelope under the door.
Talia moved before I did.
She put on gloves, opened it carefully, and unfolded a single photograph.
Me.
In the alley.
Kneeling beside Lucian.
Across the bottom, in black marker, someone had written: YOU SHOULD HAVE KEPT WALKING.
Talia called Marco.
I stared at the picture until my hands went numb.
“Can they get in here?” I asked.
“Not while I’m breathing.”
“That is exactly the kind of dramatic sentence that makes me nervous.”
Talia glanced up. “Fair.”
She softened her voice. “The front lock needs to be replaced. Today.”
“My landlord has ignored six requests.”
“Then he can ignore the bill.”
“I’m not letting Lucian renovate my life.”
“This is a lock, Cora. Not a yacht.”
That was how, by sunset, my building had the first functioning front lock in eight months.
Lucian did not come upstairs.
He waited at the diner across the street.
I knew because Talia said, “He wants to speak with you in public so you don’t accuse him of kidnapping.”
“That is thoughtful.”
“He’s evolving.”
The diner had cracked red booths and coffee that tasted like burnt pennies. Lucian sat at table seven in a charcoal coat, one hand resting near his ribs. No visible guards. I noticed them anyway: a man reading a newspaper near the window, a woman at the counter stirring coffee she never drank.
I slid into the booth.
“You look terrible,” I said.
“Thank you.”
“Shouldn’t you be in bed?”
“I was.”
“And?”
“I disliked it.”
A waitress arrived. Lucian looked at me.
“Order anything.”
“Careful. I have expensive tastes now.”
“You ate six-dollar chicken in an alley.”
“It was excellent chicken.”
I ordered soup and grilled cheese because pride is easier on a full stomach.
Lucian waited until the waitress left.
“The photograph means they were closer than I thought.”
“Who are they?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“I know who benefits if I die.”
“That sounds like a long list.”
“It is.”
I watched his face.
Up close and dry, he looked less mythical than the rumors. Tired. Angry. Human. There was a faint line of pain between his eyebrows he kept trying to erase.
“Why were you in my alley?” I asked.
His gaze shifted to the rain outside.
“I was meeting someone.”
“At a dumpster?”
“The meeting began elsewhere.”
“And ended badly.”
“Yes.”
“What did they want?”
“A ledger.”
The word landed strangely.
“My father used to say only guilty men and accountants cared that much about ledgers.”
Lucian looked back at me.
“What did your father do?”
“Dock accountant. South Harbor Logistics.”
For the first time, Lucian lost control of his expression.
It was small. A blink too slow. His shoulders tightening.
“What?” I asked.
“What was his name?”
“Michael Davis.”
Silence.
The diner noise seemed to move away from us.
Lucian’s face went still.
“You knew him.”
“No.”
“That was too fast.”
He looked down at his coffee.
“My family owned South Harbor Logistics for years.”
“I know.”
“You never mentioned your father worked there.”
“You never asked.”
His fingers tightened around the mug.
“When did he die?”
“Eight years ago.”
“How?”
“Heart attack.”
Lucian’s eyes lifted to mine.
“Are you sure?”
My body went cold in a way the weather had nothing to do with.
“What does that mean?”
He leaned back carefully.
“Nothing I can prove.”
“Then don’t say it.”
“I’m trying not to.”
The waitress set down my soup. Neither of us touched it.
“Lucian.”
He looked at me.
“What happened at South Harbor?”
He did not answer immediately.
That was answer enough.
“My father died in our living room,” I said. “He had been scared for weeks. He kept checking the windows. He told me work was complicated. Then one night he came home early, complained his chest hurt, and collapsed.”
Lucian’s jaw tightened.
“Did the hospital test for toxins?”
I stared at him.
“He had a heart attack.”
“I asked whether they tested.”
“He was forty-seven.”
“Cora.”
I pushed out of the booth.
He caught my wrist.
Not hard.
But I ripped it away anyway.
“Don’t.”
His hand dropped at once.
“I’m sorry.”
“You do not get to walk into my life after eight years and turn my father’s death into one of your mafia riddles.”
His voice stayed low. “I am telling you there may have been an investigation at South Harbor involving missing funds, falsified manifests, and a man named Michael Davis who refused to sign something.”
My knees weakened.
I sat down again because the alternative was falling.
“What thing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who does?”
Lucian looked toward the door.
“My uncle, Adrian Vale.”
“Where is he?”
“Dead.”
“Convenient.”
“For somebody.”
I stared at him.
He reached into his coat and placed a folded photocopy on the table.
It was an old shipping memo.
At the bottom, beneath several names, was my father’s signature.
Except the signature had been crossed out in red.
Beside it someone had written two words:
WON’T COMPLY.
My soup sat steaming between us.
I could not feel my hands.
Lucian said, “The ledger they tried to kill me for may explain what happened to your father.”
I looked up.
“And where is it?”
May you like
His answer was almost a whisper.
“I think your father hid it.”
