Chapter 9 - The Clock That Never Told the Truth
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The old shipping office looked smaller than I remembered.
When I was a child, my father had brought me there once to deliver a repaired pocket watch to a man whose name I never learned. I remembered the smell of river water, the creak of the wooden steps, and a clock above the entrance whose hands had been frozen at 4:17.
My father had laughed when I asked why nobody repaired it.
“Some people prefer a clock that never tells them how late they are,” he had said.
I had forgotten the remark until I read my mother's note.
Now the building stood behind a chain-link fence, its brick walls darkened by decades of weather. Rebecca arrived with two federal agents and a warrant authorizing a search of the property. Vincent remained beside me, his hands visible, his expression tense.
“No one touches anything until the agents document it,” Rebecca said.
Vincent nodded.
Inside, dust covered the desks and broken filing cabinets. The air smelled of damp wood and rust. Sunlight entered through cracked windows, illuminating a narrow staircase that led to a second-floor office.
The clock still hung above the entrance.
Its hands remained fixed at 4:17.
I stepped closer and examined the wooden frame. A small brass plate was attached to the bottom edge, engraved with the Moretti family crest.
“There's a seam here,” I said.
One of the agents photographed it before allowing me to examine it more closely. I pressed gently along the frame until a panel moved.
Behind it lay a narrow metal compartment.
Inside was a key wrapped in oilcloth and a small envelope bearing my mother's initials.
My hands trembled as I opened it.
The note contained a series of coordinates and a name.
Morrow Street Vault. Box 317.
Rebecca photographed the note and passed it to the agents.
“Do you know this place?” she asked.
Vincent stared at the coordinates.
“It's an old private records vault. My grandfather used it for contracts before the company moved its operations.”
“Does your family still control it?”
“No. The lease expired years ago.”
“Who controls it now?”
Vincent checked the address.
“A company called Northstar Holdings.”
Rebecca looked up.
“Victor Sloane.”
We exchanged a glance.
The evidence was becoming harder to dismiss as coincidence.
The agents secured the key and arranged for a legal search of the vault. We returned to the safe house, where I spent the afternoon reviewing the names and account numbers in my mother's letter.
I recognized one of the companies as a supplier of rare gemstones. Another had been registered to a shipping firm that had declared bankruptcy shortly after my father's death. A third had received payments from a business connected to Vincent's father.
The pattern suggested a system designed to move money between companies while hiding its original source.
But the records alone could not prove who had ordered the murders.
I needed the original portfolio.
That evening, Vincent brought me tea and sat across from me at the kitchen table.
“You've been staring at those pages for six hours.”
“I've been working.”
“You need a break.”
“I need answers.”
He placed the tea beside my laptop.
“You can have both.”
I looked up.
“Is that how you treated yourself after your father died?”
He went still.
“What do you mean?”
“You told me you worked until you collapsed. You never spoke about him. You buried yourself in the company.”
He looked out the window.
“I thought if I became powerful enough, nobody could take anything else from me.”
“And did it work?”
“No.”
The answer was so quiet that I almost missed it.
He looked back at me.
“I lost my father. Then I nearly lost the company. Then I married a woman who needed me to listen, and I treated her like another problem I could solve with money.”
I set my pen down.
“Why did you marry me, Vincent?”
He seemed surprised by the question.
“Because I loved you.”
“That isn't enough of an answer.”
He considered it.
“Because you were the first person who challenged me without trying to humiliate me. Because you made me laugh when I didn't think I could. Because you cared more about whether a jeweler had been paid fairly than whether I had just bought another company. You made me feel like I could be someone other than my father's son.”
My throat tightened.
“I loved you, too.”
“I know.”
“No. You knew I loved you. You didn't understand what it cost me to stay.”
He lowered his eyes.
“You're right.”
We sat in silence.
For the first time, I could remember the good parts of our marriage without feeling as though I was betraying the woman who had left it. Love had existed between us. That did not make the cruelty acceptable. It simply made the loss more complicated.
A message arrived from Rebecca.
The vault company has confirmed the lease records. Search scheduled for tomorrow morning. One complication: someone accessed Box 317 three days ago using a key registered to Elias Voss.
I showed Vincent.
His face hardened.
“Elias is alive.”
“Or someone has his key.”
Rebecca sent another message.
The access record includes a security photograph. We're reviewing it now.
A few minutes later, she called.
Her voice was strained.
“We have an image from the vault's lobby camera.”
“What does it show?” I asked.
“Elias Voss entering the building three days ago.”
“Can you identify him?”
“Yes.”
I exhaled.
“Then we find him.”
Rebecca hesitated.
“There's something else. He wasn't alone.”
She sent the photograph.
Elias stood beside a tall man in a dark coat.
The man's face was partly turned away, but I recognized the shape of his shoulders and the silver watch on his wrist.
May you like
Vincent leaned toward the screen.
“That's Luca.”
