Chapter 9 - THE FERRY TERMINAL
Christian wanted to move Elaine immediately. Sophie insisted on speaking to the hospital staff first, then helped transfer her mother to a private room under a name only the attending physician and one trusted nurse knew. She did not mistake security for safety anymore. Safety required knowing who could be trusted—and accepting that the answer might change.
At eleven-thirty, Christian, Sophie, and Leo arrived at the abandoned ferry terminal. Declan’s team secured the perimeter, while two Romanov men watched the river entrance. The city lights glittered on black water. Wind pushed scraps of paper across the cracked concrete.
A figure waited beneath a broken departure sign.
Vivian.
She wore a dark coat, no gloves, and a thin bandage wrapped around her damaged hand. The exposed prosthetics had been replaced with a plain black brace. Without the emerald gown and diamond ring, she looked smaller, though no less dangerous.
“You came,” she said to Christian.
“You threatened a patient.”
“I left a message. There’s a difference.”
Sophie stepped forward. “You put my mother in danger. You used my father’s death to manipulate me. Why?”
Vivian looked at her for a long moment. “Because your father kept the only ledger that could identify the Architect’s real clients. Your mother knew where the second copy was hidden. I needed you frightened enough to lead me to her, but alive enough to make her cooperate.”
“You could have asked.”
Vivian laughed. “Would you have helped me?”
“No.”
“Exactly.”
Christian demanded the ledger. Vivian said she had it, but only half. The rest was in the hands of Elias Voss, who planned to sell it to the highest bidder. She had been hired to kill Christian, then discovered that her employers intended to erase her after the summit. The poison had been both a mission and a test of loyalty. When the fork shattered her prosthetic, she knew her handlers would abandon her.
“Why should we believe you?” Leo asked.
“You shouldn’t,” Vivian replied. “But you should believe that Voss hates loose ends. He’ll kill all of us if he gets the ledger first.”
She handed Sophie a small memory card. It contained recordings of conversations between Voss and several prominent businessmen, politicians, and underworld leaders. One voice belonged to Michael Callahan. Another belonged to a man who had been presumed dead for years.
Christian listened to a fragment, then went pale.
The voice was his mother’s.
Margaret Callahan was alive in the recording, speaking clearly about the ledger and naming the person who had betrayed Daniel Miller. The audio ended before she said the name.
“Where did you get this?” Christian demanded.
“From Voss. He kept it as insurance,” Vivian said. “I don’t know where your mother is now.”
A gunshot echoed from the far end of the terminal. The lights went out. Declan shouted a warning, and the group dropped behind a concrete barrier as bullets struck the old departure sign.
When emergency lights flickered back on, Vivian was gone.
So was Leo.
Sophie crawled toward the place where Leo had stood. On the ground lay his ring, smeared with blood. Christian grabbed her arm before she could run into the open.
A phone vibrated beside the ring. It displayed a single incoming message from an unknown number:
BRING THE WAITRESS TO THE OLD CALLAHAN HOUSE. COME ALONE, OR ROMANOV DIES.
Christian stared at the message. Then he looked at Sophie.
“No,” he said. “They don’t get to use you again.”
May you like
But Sophie was already studying the photograph attached to the message. It showed Leo tied to a chair inside a familiar room, one she had seen only in the old family pictures.
Behind him, standing in the doorway, was a woman with Christian’s eyes.
