Chapter 4 - The Price of Silence
The study on the second floor of the West Wing looked out over the black water of Ashport Bay.
There were no curtains on the floor-to-ceiling glass, only the vast expanse of leaden sky and the gray swells below.
A massive desk of bog oak sat in the center of the Persian rug, clear of paperwork save for a single manila folder.
Ronan did not sit behind the desk.
He stood by the cold hearth, lighting a thin black cigar with an engraved silver lighter that clicked shut with a sharp snap.
"Sadie Cole," he began, quoting from memory without glancing at the paper Marcus had delivered to the table.
"Twenty-eight years old.
Address: Fourteen Wharf Street, apartment four-B.
No vehicle registered.
No bank account with a balance exceeding seventy dollars in the last twenty-four months."
He exhaled a thin stream of gray smoke toward the high ceiling.
"No criminal record in the state of Maine, or New York, or Massachusetts.
No traffic violations.
No credit history prior to four years ago."
He turned his gray eyes toward her, cold as the sea beneath the windows.
"You don't exist before forty-eight months ago, Miss Cole.
In my business, when a person has no history, it means someone with a great deal of money and very dirty hands paid to have it burned."
Sadie stood with her feet planted six inches apart, her hands resting flat against the seams of her apron.
"I lived off the grid with a man who didn't believe in papers, Mr. Cain," she said, her voice steady as iron.
"When he died, I took my child and came to Ashport because nobody looks twice at a woman washing dishes."
"And the child?" Ronan asked, his tone deceptively casual.
"Poppy Cole.
Six years old.
Enrolled at St. Jude’s Public Primary.
She takes the sixteen bus at eight in the morning and returns at three-fifteen."
The temperature in Sadie’s blood plummeted below freezing.
The mention of the bus number was not an observation; it was a leash wrapped around her throat.
"Leave my daughter out of this," she said, her voice dropping into a harsh whisper that abandoned all servant deference.
"I don't make threats against children, Miss Cole," Ronan replied, his face devoid of emotion.
"I simply know the layout of the board before I move a piece.
My mother has refused to speak or communicate since the day we lowered Julian’s casket into the stone crypt."
He tapped the ash into a bronze tray shaped like a ship’s anchor.
"The doctors said her silence was hysterical aphasia brought on by trauma.
They said her mind was gone.
They wanted her placed in a sanitarium in Vermont."
He walked slowly toward Sadie, stopping just outside arm’s reach.
"This morning, for the first time in four years, she didn't throw her medicine at the wall.
She used the private alphabet she and Julian invented when they were running contraband through the bay thirty years ago."
Sadie remained rigid, not letting her eyelids flutter.
"I cannot help what she imagined she saw, Mr. Cain."
"Don't lie to me again," Ronan said softly, his voice carrying the finality of a closing iron door.
"Beginning today, your contract with Beacon Staffing is terminated.
You are now my mother’s private companion.
Your salary will be five thousand dollars a week, deposited in cash into an account I will open for you."
Sadie’s breath caught in her chest despite her iron control.
Five thousand dollars a week was more than she made in an entire year of scraping grease from harbor pans.
"And the conditions?" she asked, knowing every coin from a Cain came drenched in blood.
"You live here during the week," Ronan answered immediately.
"You do not leave the grounds without my personal escort.
You do not speak to the other staff about what my mother signs to you.
And every word she communicates to you is repeated to me in this room before the sun sets."
Sadie looked at him, seeing the dark ambition and the bitter suspicion that governed his world.
"I have a child who cannot spend her nights alone in a tenement with a deadbolt held by two wood screws."
Ronan nodded once, as if he had already solved the problem hours before she stepped through his gates.
"Every evening at five, Marcus will drive you to Wharf Street.
You will have two hours to feed your daughter, put her to bed under the care of a woman I have already vetted, and return by seven."
"And if I refuse your generous offer?"
Ronan leaned down, his eyes boring into hers until she could see her own reflection in his dark pupils.
"If you refuse, I will wonder why a woman with Julian’s private cipher and Julian’s regimental ink is hiding in a one-room flat on Wharf Street."
May you like
He turned toward the window, dismissing her with a wave of his fingers.
"And when I start looking into things, Miss Cole, I don't stop until I reach the bottom of the sea."
