Sylvie watched in heartbreak as Tavish’s fiancée Benedetta ripped a photograph of the toddler’s missing mother from an album, dropped it into a fountain, and cruelly whispered that it was just another secret and another piece of her mother.

The second-floor gallery of the ancestral manor was dark and cavernous, smelling of aged mahogany, floor wax, and the dry chill of unheated stone.

Tavish walked at the head of the group, his polished shoes clicking with steady, deliberate rhythm against the hardwood runners. Behind him, Marcus and two guards shoved Benedetta and Julian down the corridor. Benedetta’s bare feet were bleeding from broken glass on the gravel drive, but she made no sound, her eyes fixed on Tavish’s back with pure, venomous despair.

They stopped at the far end of the west wing, before a pair of tall oak doors carved with the relief of a winged seraph holding a balance scale. The angel of justice.

Across the brass handles, fresh scratches scarred the antique wood. The lock plate was dented, chipped by clumsy blows from a heavy metal tool.

"You brought a crowbar to my mother’s bedroom," Tavish observed, running his bare finger over the damaged wood.

"We needed the ledger, Tavish!" Julian wheezed, his wet shirt clinging to his shivering frame. "You don't understand the pressure we were under! The Corsicans gave us until midnight tonight! If we didn't have the proof of the payoffs, they were going to execute our entire family!"

"Then you should have prepared your wills," Tavish replied coldly.

He reached into his pocket, brought out the small brass key, and inserted it into the narrow keyhole hidden beneath the angel’s right wing.

The mechanism turned with a soft, oiled click that echoed like a gunshot through the silent hallway.

Tavish pushed the doors open.

The air inside the room was stale, frozen in time from fourteen months ago. Dust motes drifted through the pale moonlight filtering through the high arched windows. The grand four-poster bed was stripped of linen; the antique vanity held empty silver perfume bottles.

In the corner, built directly into the load-bearing stone of the chimney breast, stood a heavy iron armoire—a reinforced vault disguised as a wardrobe, fitted with an antique lever-action combination lock.

Tavish walked across the Persian rug, stopping before the iron doors.

"The key doesn't open the vault, does it?" Tavish murmured without turning around.

Benedetta let out a bitter, shivering sob from the doorway. "No. It doesn't. The key only opens the lower compartment. The lock on the vault requires a four-digit sequence that only your mother and Clara knew."

Tavish looked down. Beneath the massive iron handles of the wardrobe sat a tiny brass escutcheon, no larger than a coin.

He knelt down. He slid the brass key into the lower slot and turned it clockwise.

A hidden spring tripped with a hollow thunk. A small wooden drawer lined with faded green velvet slid out three inches from the baseboard.

Inside the drawer lay an antique reel-to-reel micro-cassette recorder, three handwritten letters sealed in wax with his mother’s personal crest, and a small silver locket containing a photograph of Tavish as a boy.

Beside the letters lay a single sheet of heavy parchment, covered in Clara’s neat, flowing cursive.

Tavish picked up the parchment. His eyes swept across the lines:

Tavish,

If you are reading this, Sylvie found the courage to give you the album. I could not stay to fight them, my love. They threatened to drop our daughter from the terrace if I spoke a single word to you before the engagement was sealed. The combination to the vault is the day Sylvie took her first steps: 0-9-1-4. Everything you need to bury the Vance family is inside. Forgive me for leaving. Come find me.

Tavish closed his eyes for three seconds, his chest rising and falling in one deep, shuddering breath.

When he opened them, the darkness in his gaze was total.

"0-9-1-4," Tavish whispered.