Chapter 3 - The Name in Her Father’s Toolbox
Maxim had Bee inside an armored SUV within ninety seconds.
“I am going home.”
“No.”
“You don't get to tell me no.”
“Someone just moved an illegal shipment because you walked into my meeting.”
“Sounds like your problem.”
“Ferraro knew who you were.”
That silenced her.
Maxim sat opposite her as Manhattan blurred beyond tinted glass.
“Your father,” he said. “What did he do?”
“Mechanic.”
“Where?”
“Queens.”
“Name?”
“Patrick Callahan.”
Maxim's expression changed.
It was small.
Bee caught it anyway.
“You know that name.”
“No.”
“You're a terrible liar.”
Maxim looked out the window.
Bee leaned forward.
“Turn the car around.”
“We're going somewhere secure.”
“Turn it around or I'm opening this door.”
“At forty miles an hour?”
“I've made worse decisions this week.”
His eyes returned to hers.
Then he told the driver, “Queens.”
Bee's apartment looked even smaller with Maxim Rosetti standing inside it.
He seemed absurd beside her thrift-store couch and crooked bookshelf.
Bee pulled an old metal toolbox from the closet.
Her father had left it to her.
She had never thrown it away.
Most of it contained ordinary things: sockets, wrenches, electrical tape, old receipts.
At the bottom was a false panel.
Bee stared.
“I didn't know that was there.”
Maxim crouched beside her.
“Don't touch anything.”
“It's my father's box.”
She pried the panel open.
Inside was an envelope.
A brass key.
And a photograph.
Bee stopped breathing.
Her father stood beside a much younger man.
Maxim's father.
On the back, written in Patrick Callahan's handwriting, were four words:
If Rosetti falls, look here.
Maxim took the photograph.
“My father knew yours.”
“Apparently.”
“He never mentioned him.”
“Mine never mentioned yours.”
They found a second envelope containing numbers, dates and company names.
Maxim went completely still.
“What?”
“These are shell companies.”
“English.”
“They own pieces of my legitimate businesses.”
Bee stared at the pages.
“What does my father have to do with them?”
“I don't know.”
A sound came from the hallway.
Maxim's head snapped toward the door.
Then the lock exploded.
He shoved Bee down.
A bullet tore through the wall above them.
Maxim pulled a pistol from beneath his jacket and fired twice.
Bee crawled behind the couch.
Glass shattered.
Someone shouted outside.
Then silence.
Maxim reached for Bee.
“Are you hit?”
“No.”
His hands moved over her shoulders anyway, checking.
For once there was no arrogance in his face.
Only fear.
Not fear for himself.
For her.
The realization unsettled Bee more than the gunfire.
His men stormed upstairs seconds later.
The attacker was gone.
But something had been pushed beneath Bee's door.
A photograph.
Her mother leaving the assisted-living facility with a nurse.
Written across it:
THE OLD WOMAN NEXT.
Bee stopped shaking.
She became very calm.
“Take me to my mother.”
Maxim did.
He moved Margaret Callahan that afternoon to a private medical residence under another name, paying three months in advance before Bee discovered what he had done.
She cornered him outside her mother's room.
“I don't take charity.”
“Good. Consider it a debt.”
“For what?”
“For your father apparently helping mine.”
“You don't know that.”
“No.”
Bee lowered her voice.
“And you don't own me because you're protecting my mother.”
Maxim's jaw tightened.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
She studied him.
Something about him had changed since the diner.
Or perhaps something about her had changed enough to see him differently.
Later that night, they returned to Maxim's penthouse and spread Patrick's papers across a dining table.
Bee recognized one symbol immediately.
A tiny bee drawn beside several numbers.
Her throat tightened.
“My dad used to mark important things that way for me.”
Maxim sat beside her.
“What things?”
“Birthday presents. Notes in my lunchbox. Places where he'd hidden emergency cash.”
She followed the marked numbers.
They formed dates.
Eight years earlier.
The month Patrick Callahan died.
Officially, he had been killed by a drunk driver.
But one date appeared repeatedly.
The day before his death.
Beside it were initials.
M.R.
Maxim Rosetti.
Bee slowly looked at him.
Maxim's face went pale.
“I didn't know your father.”
“Your initials are beside the date he died.”
“I know.”
“Were you there?”
“No.”
She wanted to believe him.
That frightened her.
Then Maxim's phone rang.
His security chief spoke for less than five seconds.
Maxim stood.
“What happened?” Bee asked.
He looked at her.
“Ferraro is dead.”
Bee's stomach dropped.
“How?”
“He was murdered in our holding room.”
“By whom?”
May you like
Maxim's voice became almost inaudible.
“Someone inside my house.”
