Chapter 6 - Four Years of Keeping Me Alive
The first thing I wanted to do was find Graham Keane.
The second thing I wanted to do was make sure he never walked out of the room.
Tessa stopped me.
Not physically.
She simply said, “That is what Nicholas would have done.”
I looked at her.
“And Nicholas died.”
The sentence landed harder than I intended.
Tessa flinched, but she did not look away.
“If Graham is responsible, anger is what he expects from you.”
Nobody spoke to me that way.
Not anymore.
Maybe that was why I listened.
Brendan moved Tessa and Eli into a secured property outside Boston. Only three people knew the address.
Then we began examining everything Tessa had quietly noticed during her four years in the mansion.
A broken medication seal.
A study drawer left one inch open.
A missing spare key returned two days later.
An unfamiliar maintenance worker who never came back.
She had written dates inside the back cover of her Bible.
I stared at page after page of tiny handwriting.
“You recorded all this?”
“I didn’t know what mattered.”
“You could have told me.”
She gave me a sad smile.
“For four years you barely looked at me.”
That hurt because it was true.
I had considered silence loyalty.
Tessa had considered silence survival.
Then she removed something from the Bible’s spine.
A brass key.
“Nicholas gave me this the night before he died.”
“What does it open?”
“I don’t know.”
“He never told you?”
“He said I would know when it was safe to use.”
“And now?”
Tessa looked toward Eli.
“Now someone knows we’re alive.”
Engraved on the key were three numbers.
Brendan recognized the numbering format immediately.
Safe-deposit boxes at an old private bank in Back Bay.
The bank had changed names twice.
But box 317 still existed.
It had not been opened in nine years.
May you like
The registered owner was not Nicholas.
It was me.
