Chapter 2 - THE EIGHT O’CLOCK TEST
At 7:58 the next morning, Ivy walked into Damon Cole's study and found three armed men waiting to see her fail.
Rocco was one of them.
Preston Wade was another.
The third was Damon himself.
Ivy had abandoned her gray maid's uniform for the only professional clothes she owned: black trousers, a cream blouse, and an old navy blazer she'd bought six years earlier in Marseille.
Preston looked her up and down.
"Playing executive now?"
Ivy ignored him.
Damon didn't.
"Another comment like that," Damon said quietly, "and you can play unemployed."
Preston's smile vanished.
A laptop sat open on Damon's desk. Four men waited on the screen in a conference room thousands of miles away.
Damon pointed to the chair beside him.
"Sit."
Ivy sat.
Rocco remained standing behind them.
"The man in the center is Mateo Serrano," Damon explained. "He controls distribution for half the ports we need in South America. We have forty minutes before he walks."
"And what exactly am I supposed to do?"
"Tell me when someone lies."
Ivy looked at him.
"Translation doesn't do that."
"People do."
For the first time, she almost smiled.
The call began.
Mateo spoke Spanish quickly, explaining that recent port inspections had made Damon's proposed arrangement impossible. Preston started taking notes.
Ivy didn't.
She listened.
After four minutes, she leaned toward Damon.
"He's lying."
Mateo stopped speaking.
Damon muted the microphone.
"About what?"
"The inspections."
"How do you know?"
"He said customs inspections happen every Thursday. Then his assistant corrected him under his breath and said Tuesday. Mateo told him to shut up."
Preston scoffed. "That's hardly proof."
Ivy looked at him.
"You didn't hear the assistant?"
"He was mumbling."
"In Spanish."
Preston flushed.
Damon unmuted the call.
"Mateo," he said, "tell me what really happened Tuesday."
The Colombian man's expression changed.
For twenty seconds, nobody spoke.
Then Mateo dismissed everyone from his conference room except one older adviser.
The story changed completely.
There had been no inspection.
A competing organization had bribed a port administrator and was threatening anyone working with Cole International.
By 8:34, Damon had a revised agreement.
By 8:39, Mateo had accepted it.
And at 8:41, Ivy noticed something far more disturbing.
Mateo's older adviser had used a phrase.
La puerta gris.
The gray door.
Her father had used those exact words.
Twelve years ago.
The memory hit so hard Ivy's fingers tightened around her pen.
Damon noticed.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"You're bad at that."
"At what?"
"Lying."
The call ended.
Damon leaned back.
"How many languages?"
Ivy hesitated.
"Seven comfortably."
Rocco actually laughed.
"Seven?"
"French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, English, Arabic, and Russian."
Preston stared at her.
Damon didn't look impressed.
He looked suspicious.
"Nobody accidentally learns seven languages."
"My father moved around."
"Doing what?"
"Import-export."
Rocco snorted.
"That's what criminals call crime when they want their children to sleep."
Ivy's gaze snapped toward him.
Rocco's expression changed.
He had guessed too close.
Damon saw it.
"Everybody out."
Preston left first.
Rocco lingered.
"Damon—"
"Out."
The door closed.
Damon walked around his desk.
"Who was your father?"
"Arthur Marlowe."
Nothing happened.
Then Damon's face became completely still.
That frightened Ivy more than surprise would have.
"You know the name."
"I know a name."
"My father died twelve years ago."
"How?"
"Car accident."
Damon stared at her.
"No, he didn't."
The room seemed to tilt.
"What?"
"Arthur Marlowe wasn't killed in a car accident."
Ivy stood.
"Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't take something you know nothing about and turn it into one of your games."
"This isn't a game."
"Then what happened?"
Damon was silent.
That silence answered too much.
Ivy walked toward him.
"What happened to my father?"
Before Damon could respond, someone knocked.
Rocco entered without waiting.
His face was pale.
"We've got a problem."
Damon's eyes stayed on Ivy.
"What?"
"The Marseille transfer disappeared."
"How much?"
"Four hundred and eighty million."
Ivy forgot to breathe.
Rocco continued.
"Someone changed the routing instructions twelve minutes after Faucher left last night."
"From where?"
Rocco slowly looked at Ivy.
"Inside this house."
The implication landed instantly.
Ivy laughed once in disbelief.
"You think I did it?"
"I think," Rocco said, "that a maid nobody noticed for three years suddenly revealed she speaks seven languages on the exact night half a billion dollars vanished."
Damon said nothing.
That hurt more than Ivy expected.
She looked at him.
"You believe him?"
Damon walked toward the desk and pressed a button.
The study doors locked.
"Nobody leaves the property."
Ivy's stomach dropped.
"Am I a prisoner?"
"No."
"Then unlock the door."
Damon didn't.
Instead, he opened a security report.
Someone had entered the private communications room at 2:13 that morning.
The camera showed a woman in a gray maid's uniform.
Brown hair.
Ivy's height.
Ivy's build.
The woman turned toward the camera.
It was Ivy's face.
Rocco swore.
Ivy stared at the screen.
"That's impossible."
Damon studied her instead of the video.
"Where were you at 2:13?"
"Asleep."
"Anyone see you?"
"No."
Rocco reached for his phone.
Damon raised one hand.
"Wait."
He enlarged the image.
Then he looked at Ivy's left hand.
"Show me your wrist."
"What?"
"Your wrist."
She reluctantly pulled up her sleeve.
A thin white scar crossed the inside of her left wrist.
Damon looked back at the recording.
The woman in the video had no scar.
"That's not her."
Rocco leaned closer.
Someone had created a near-perfect disguise.
Damon's expression darkened.
Which meant whoever had stolen the money hadn't merely expected Ivy to be blamed.
They had planned for Ivy to become important before she actually did.
Damon turned toward her.
"Someone knew what you could do."
A cold realization crawled through Ivy.
Only a handful of people had ever known the truth about her languages.
Most were dead.
Damon opened another file.
"The routing code used last night," he said, "was called Gray Door."
Ivy stopped breathing.
May you like
Damon's next words changed everything.
"That was your father's code."
