Chapter 3 - The Ghost of the North Shore
Marco stood near the salon’s display case, his phone pressed against his ear, his voice dropped to a conspiratorial hiss that was drowned out by the roar of the washing stations behind them.
"I don't care what the probate files say, Lev," Marco was saying into the receiver, his knuckles white against the black phone casing. "Pull the twenty-fifteen file from the Nassau County fire marshal’s office. The Blackthorne fire. Look for the coroner’s inventory on the daughter. Look for who signed the death certificate without dental records."
A pause on the line. Marco listened, his dark eyes flicking toward the washing sinks where three assistants were currently working three gallons of warm clarified water through the stubble on Wren’s scalp.
"Julian Sterling did," Marco said, his jaw working. "He brought in a private pathologist from Philadelphia who certified three sets of remains within forty-eight hours. The ashes were scattered at sea before the state police could run DNA on the femur fragments."
Marco hung up, turning toward Adrian, who sat on a leather banquette near the coffee bar, an unopened bottle of water resting between his boots. Adrian had removed his overcoat; the dark crimson bloom on his white shirt had spread two inches wider, but he had refused to allow Clara to call an ambulance.
"It’s confirmed, boss," Marco said, leaning over the counter. "The whole estate passed to Julian in November of twenty-eighteen. He liquidated the container fleet, shifted the liquid assets into offshore holdings in the Caymans, and used the shell companies to fund the Volkov syndicate’s operations in Red Hook. He didn't just burn his brother's family for the money. He did it because Harold was about to hand over the port manifests to the federal prosecutor."
"Harold Sterling was a puritan," Adrian murmured, his eyes fixed on the ceramic sink where steam was rising in fragrant clouds of bergamot and cedar. "He would have closed the docks to contraband before he let his name be dragged through a federal courtroom. Julian wanted the grease. He wanted the Russian margins."
"If Julian finds out she’s alive..."
"He won't find out from this room," Adrian said, his slate-gray eyes shifting toward the creative director, who was currently mixing an amino-acid scalp treatment in a glass bowl. "Lindqvist."
Théo looked up from his counter, the silver spatula pausing in his hand. "Mr. Kane?"
"The people who were in here when we walked in. The clients with the foils."
"Three women from the 10021 zip code," Théo said smoothly, though the slight tremble in his fingers gave away his nerves. "They left through the rear courtyard. I gave them each thirty thousand dollars from your envelope and told them that a high-profile client was undergoing reconstructive hair therapy following a chemical burn. They will talk about the smell, yes. But they have no idea whose hair was on that floor."
"Keep it that way," Adrian said. "If one word about the Sterling name appears in a society column or a group chat before I make the call, I will not send lawyers to this address, Théo. I will send the men who cleared the pier in Greenpoint."
Théo swallowed hard, bowing his head with European precision. "My discretion has been tested by worse than you, Mr. Kane. Your secret is safe with this house."
At the sink, the water ran black.
Then gray.
Then yellow with old oils, tobacco residue, and the bitter rust of three hundred nights spent sleeping against iron railings. Clara and another assistant worked with surgical sponges, their touch so gentle that Wren had stopped trembling. She lay back against the contoured porcelain, her eyes shut tight, her breathing evening out into the rhythm of a person who had been pulled from an icy river and placed before a fire.
"The scalp has severe follicular dermatitis," Clara reported softly, her hands working a rich lather of chamomile and tea tree oil through the two inches of remaining hair. "There are four distinct lacerations from old wire that have scarred over into keloids. But the follicles are alive, Mr. Kane. Once we clear the crust, the hair will grow."
"What color?" Adrian asked.
Clara paused, using a warm spray nozzle to rinse the suds away from the crown.
Under the bright LED task lights, the hair that emerged from the suds was not gray. It was not the dirty mouse-brown that the street had painted onto her. It was a pale, incandescent honey-gold—the exact color of the wild rye grass that grew along the dunes of the North Shore where Harold Sterling’s private beach had met the sea.
Wren’s fingers shifted on her lap, touching the rough woolen blanket Clara had draped over her knees. "Adrian?"
She used his first name for the first time.
Adrian rose from the banquette, his boots silent on the marble, and stepped to the edge of the wash station. "I’m here."
She did not open her eyes. "My mother had a piano. An old Steinway with ivory keys that had gone yellow like butter. When the smoke started coming up through the floorboards, she sat on the bench and kept playing the Chopin prelude. The one in E minor. The slow one."
A tear slipped from beneath her soot-stained lashes, cutting a pale, clean line through the grime on her cheek.
"She played until the chandelier fell," Wren whispered. "She told me that if I stopped moving, the song would end. I've been walking for ten years, Adrian. I walked from Montauk to the Battery three times. I walked through the snow until my toes went black. I thought if I sat down... the piano would stop forever."
May you like
Adrian reached down, his scarred fingers resting lightly against the armrest of the sink chair, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his wool trousers.
"The song is over, Evie," he said, using the diminutive her mother had spoken in the fire. "You can sit down now. You're off the road."
