Chapter 5 - Silk Over Scars
The penthouse on Sutton Place was forty floors above the East River, surrounded by wraparound terraces of Indiana limestone that caught the bitter north wind coming off the Long Island Sound. Inside, the floors were dark ebonized oak, covered in antique Persian rugs that had absorbed the footsteps of three generations of Kane men who lived with their backs to the wall and their fingers on the triggers of unregistered automatics.
Mrs. Gable, a severe woman of sixty-five who had managed the Kane household since Adrian was a boy in prep school, stood in the marble foyer with a silver tray holding two cups of bone broth and clean linen napkins.
She took one look at Evangeline—at the short, feathery gold hair, the sharp, hollowed cheekbones, and the way her eyes checked every corner of the ceiling for surveillance cameras—and did not ask a single question.
"The bath is drawn in the north wing, Miss," Mrs. Gable said, her voice dry and steady as a church bell. "I added sea salt and almond oil. The bedroom has three locks on the interior door, and the windows are three-inch laminated ballistic glass. Nothing comes through them."
Evangeline paused on the threshold, her boots silent on the oak. "Is there a balcony?"
"There is," Adrian said, unbuttoning his overcoat and handing it to Marco. "Secured with iron grilles. But you’re not sleeping on the balcony, Evangeline. You have a four-poster bed with goose-down duvets."
"I haven't slept in an enclosed room with a closed door since October twelfth, twenty-fifteen," she said, her voice flat, devoid of self-pity. "If the door is closed, I can't smell the smoke until it’s in the room."
Adrian looked at Mrs. Gable. "Remove the door."
Mrs. Gable’s eyebrows lifted by a millimeter. "The solid mahogany pocket door, sir?"
"Take it off the track," Adrian ordered. "And bring the couch from the library into the sitting room opposite her archway. I’ll be sleeping there."
Marco stepped forward, his expression alarmed. "Boss, you have three broken ribs and a puncture wound that’s already leaking into your undershirt. You need to be in your own bed with the elevation pillows."
"My ribs are fine," Adrian said, turning his back on his lieutenant. "Evangeline. Drink the broth. Take the bath. When you’re finished, we have six hours before the evening markets close to decide how Julian Sterling loses his first fifty million."
Two hours later, the penthouse was silent save for the hum of the climate control and the distant, rhythmic clank of tugboats pushing gravel barges down the river.
Evangeline sat on the floor of the sitting room, refusing the silk-upholstered chairs, her back pressed against the limestone chimney of the central fireplace. She had wrapped herself in a heavy cashmere blanket of dark forest green, her bare feet tucked beneath her. The warmth of the fire had brought a flush of color to her cheeks, making her look younger, but the shadow behind her eyes was ancient.
On the low walnut coffee table between them lay three thick manila folders that Marco had retrieved from the safe in the basement of the Kane shipping offices on West Street.
"The Blackthorne trust was established in nineteen-forty-eight by your grandfather, Arthur Sterling," Adrian said, leaning back against the leather sofa, a glass of water untouched beside his legal pad. "It controls seventy-eight percent of the deep-water berths between Bayonne and the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Under the terms of the original deed of gift, the trust cannot be dissolved, liquidated, or transferred to secondary heirs if an heir of the primary bloodline survives."
He tapped a yellowed sheet of legal parchment with the tip of his fountain pen.
"Julian assumed the trusteeship under Section Fourteen: Presumed Extinction of Direct Lineage. To maintain that title, he had to provide the Nassau County Surrogate’s Court with an annual affidavit swearing that no living descendant of Harold Sterling had been identified."
"He swore a lie," Evangeline whispered.
"Every year on December thirty-first," Adrian agreed. "Which means every dollar he has moved, every contract he has executed with the Volkov syndicate, and every loan he has secured against the waterfront property constitutes federal mail fraud, wire fraud, and grand larceny of an estate."
"That takes years in court," she said, her fingers curling around the green wool blanket. "Julian has eight judges on his payroll. He plays golf with the district attorney in Southampton. My father told me once that the law in New York is like an umbrella: it only works if the people holding it aren't already drenched in blood."
Adrian set the pen down. The firelight caught the hard, scarred angle of his jaw, illuminating the cold, predatory patience that had made him the most feared broker on the Eastern Seaboard.
"We aren't going to court, Evangeline."
She looked up, her pale eyes narrowing. "Then what are we doing?"
"Tomorrow night is the annual Maritime Heritage Gala at the Plaza Hotel," Adrian said softly. "Julian is the guest of honor. He is signing the final transfer of the Brooklyn berths to a joint-venture consortium headed by Dmitri Volkov. The Governor will be there. The Mayor will be there. Two hundred members of the New York press corps will be drinking his champagne."
He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, ignoring the sharp, tearing pull in his flank.
"You are going to walk into that ballroom," Adrian said, each word falling like a lead sinker into deep water. "Wearing your mother’s ring. You are going to sign the registry with your full legal name. And while Julian is looking at the ghost he created, my men will be seizing every container ship in the harbor under a writ of primary ownership."
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Evangeline stared at the fire, her chest rising and falling in long, trembling drafts. "He will try to kill me before I reach the podium."
"He will try," Adrian agreed, his voice dropping into a register that made the hair on the back of Marco’s neck stand up across the room. "And that is when he will discover why the Kane family has owned this city for forty years."
