Chapter 3 - THE DEAD MAN'S LANGUAGE
Ivy slapped Damon.
Rocco's hand went beneath his jacket.
Damon raised one finger.
Rocco stopped.
Ivy stood inches from Damon, breathing hard.
"You knew."
"I knew your father's name."
"You knew his code."
"Yes."
"For three years?"
"No."
"When?"
Damon's jaw tightened.
"Last night."
She wanted to hit him again.
Instead she whispered, "Tell me everything."
Arthur Marlowe had not been an importer.
He had been an international financial intermediary who specialized in negotiations nobody could officially admit were happening. He spoke nine languages and built networks from Marseille to Tangier to Bogotá.
Then he discovered something.
Someone inside several criminal organizations had been quietly diverting money into a hidden financial network called Gray Door.
Arthur tried to expose it.
Three days later, his car exploded outside Lyon.
Ivy's mother had told her it was an accident.
"Why would she lie?"
"To keep you alive."
Ivy sank into the chair.
Her entire childhood suddenly looked different.
The sudden moves.
Her mother's insistence that she never tell classmates which languages she understood.
Her father's habit of turning conversations into games.
Never listen only to what people say, Ivy. Listen to what they avoid saying.
She had thought it was a father's strange advice.
It had been training.
Damon placed a photograph on the desk.
Arthur stood beside a younger man.
Damon.
Ivy looked up.
"You knew him."
"He saved my life."
"When?"
"Seventeen years ago."
Damon had been twenty-three and reckless, trying to build an empire from what his father had left behind. A negotiation in Marseille became an ambush.
Arthur discovered it before Damon arrived.
"He called me," Damon said. "Told me to turn the car around."
"So you owed him."
"I still do."
Ivy's eyes filled despite her attempt to stop them.
"Then why didn't you find me?"
"I tried."
"My mother changed our names twice."
Damon nodded.
"When I found Arthur's daughter years later, she was supposedly living in Oregon."
"I was."
"Then you disappeared again."
Ivy looked away.
After her mother's death, she'd drifted from job to job until circumstances brought her to Chicago.
Three years earlier, she had answered an advertisement for domestic staff.
Cole Estate.
She hadn't recognized Damon's name.
Or perhaps some buried part of her had.
A knock interrupted them.
This time Rocco entered carefully.
"We found Preston."
Damon frowned.
"Found?"
"His apartment's empty."
Preston had left the estate less than an hour after the Colombian call.
His bank accounts had been drained.
His phone was abandoned at O'Hare Airport.
On his kitchen table, investigators found a single photograph.
Arthur Marlowe.
On the back were five words.
THE DAUGHTER OPENS THE DOOR.
Ivy read it twice.
Damon took it from her.
"You're leaving."
She looked at him.
"Excuse me?"
"I'm putting you somewhere secure."
"No."
"That wasn't a request."
"And I'm not one of your employees."
"You were this morning."
"Then I quit."
Rocco coughed to hide a laugh.
Damon stared at her.
"Do you have any survival instinct?"
"Apparently enough to survive three years in your house."
"You were safe because nobody knew who you were."
"And now they do."
"Exactly."
"Which means hiding won't fix it."
Damon stepped closer.
"Ivy."
"No. Somebody stole nearly half a billion dollars using my father's code and my face. They want something from me. If you lock me away, you'll never know what."
Damon hated that she was right.
She could see it.
Finally, he said, "You stay beside me."
"That's not necessary."
"It is now."
"Are you always this controlling?"
"Yes."
"At least you're self-aware."
Rocco laughed openly this time.
Damon gave him a murderous look.
That evening, Ivy moved from the servants' wing to a guest suite on the mansion's secured third floor.
The room was larger than her childhood apartment.
At midnight, unable to sleep, she went downstairs.
She found Damon alone in the kitchen.
Not the grand dining room.
The kitchen.
His jacket was gone, sleeves rolled to his elbows, a half-finished glass of bourbon beside him.
"You drink alone often?"
He looked over.
"You interrogate employers often?"
"Former employer."
Damon almost smiled.
She sat across from him.
"Why did you become what you are?"
His expression changed.
"What am I?"
"Don't make me answer that."
"People usually use worse words."
"People are usually afraid of you."
"You're not?"
"I didn't say that."
That caught him.
Ivy looked down at his scarred knuckles.
"I'm terrified of you."
Damon became very still.
"But I'm more afraid of spending the rest of my life not knowing why my father died."
Something softened in his face.
"Then we'll find out."
"We?"
"We."
A crash shattered the quiet.
Damon moved before Ivy understood what had happened.
He dragged her to the floor.
A bullet punched through the kitchen window.
Then another.
Glass exploded across the counter.
Damon covered her body with his.
Gunfire erupted outside as guards responded.
Ivy felt Damon's heart hammering against her shoulder.
"Stay down."
A third bullet struck the refrigerator.
Then silence.
Rocco stormed into the kitchen with two guards.
"Shooter's gone."
Damon rose, pulling Ivy with him.
A bullet had grazed his upper arm.
Blood soaked his white shirt.
"You're hurt."
"It's nothing."
Ivy stared at the broken window.
Something lay among the glass.
A black envelope.
Rocco opened it carefully.
Inside was a photograph of Ivy taken that morning.
Written beneath it in French were four words.
Ivy translated automatically.
"Your father stole from us."
Behind her, Damon whispered something she wasn't supposed to hear.
"That's impossible."
She turned.
"You know what they're talking about."
Damon's silence confirmed it.
"What did my father steal?"
Damon looked at Rocco.
Then at Ivy.
"Not money."
"What, then?"
"A ledger."
"What ledger?"
Damon's answer came slowly.
"One containing enough names to destroy every major organization from Chicago to Marseille."
Ivy stared at him.
"And where is it?"
Damon looked straight into her eyes.
"According to Arthur's final message?"
May you like
He paused.
"You have it."
