Chapter 9 - THE WOMAN WHO DIED NINE YEARS AGO
Ivy stared at Lorenzo Vale until the room seemed to lose depth.
“My mother is dead.”
Vale pressed his hand against the side of his head.
“That is what you were told.”
“I buried her.”
Ryan looked at Ivy.
Vale said, “Did you see her body?”
The question was cruel because the answer arrived immediately.
No.
The funeral had been closed casket.
Lena had supposedly died in a highway accident outside Brunswick. The car burned after leaving the road. Ivy had been 24, broke, numb, and surrounded by adults who spoke softly while asking for signatures.
A cremation followed.
The urn had been delivered 3 days later.
Ivy had scattered half the ashes near Tybee because Lena loved the ocean.
She had kept the rest in a blue ceramic jar for 9 years.
Her knees weakened.
Ryan moved closer without touching her.
“No,” Ivy said again.
This time the word was smaller.
Vale watched her with something resembling regret.
“Gabriel arranged contingency identities for 3 people connected to the Marrow House records. Lena was one.”
“Gabriel died 3 years before my mother.”
“Yes.”
“Then he did not fake her death.”
“No.”
“Who did?”
Vale looked at Ryan.
“Victor.”
Ivy laughed.
It came out wrong.
“Of course.”
Ryan crouched in front of Vale.
“Careful. You are currently inside my family’s vault with a head injury and no useful reason for me to believe you.”
Vale smiled weakly.
“You think I enjoy telling her this?”
“I think you enjoy surviving.”
“That too.”
Ryan’s voice lowered.
“Why would Victor fake Lena’s death if he wanted her dead?”
“Because he didn’t know where Gabriel hid the complete ledger.”
Ivy’s breathing stopped for a second.
Vale continued.
“Lena knew. Victor needed her alive until she told him.”
“So he kidnapped her?” Ivy asked.
“Not exactly.”
“What does not exactly mean when discussing my mother being alive?”
Vale winced as he shifted.
“After Gabriel died, Victor watched Lena. For 3 years. She knew it. She kept moving records, sending copies, hiding pieces. Eventually she learned Victor planned to use you.”
Ivy felt sick.
“How?”
“He would threaten you. Maybe take you. Lena believed the only way to remove you from the equation was to make herself useless.”
“So she pretended to die.”
“Yes.”
“And left me.”
Vale said nothing.
Ivy’s eyes burned.
She hated that more than fear.
Hated crying in front of Ryan.
Hated crying because a woman she had mourned might have chosen absence.
“She let me think she was dead.”
Ryan’s voice was quiet.
“She may have thought it was the only way.”
Ivy turned on him.
“Do not defend her.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m explaining fear.”
“I understand fear.”
Her voice rose.
“I understand bills after a funeral. I understand calling a dead woman’s phone for 6 months because hearing voicemail hurts less than silence. I understand packing an apartment alone because everybody else has jobs and lives and eventually grief becomes inconvenient.”
Ryan did not move.
Ivy wiped her face angrily.
“If she is alive, she does not get to become noble because disappearing was difficult.”
“No,” Ryan said.
The simple agreement steadied her more than comfort would have.
Vale looked away.
Marcus entered the vault carrying a portable drive.
“We found a backup index. RA-47 was mirrored 5 years ago.”
Ryan stood.
“Location?”
“Encrypted.”
“Can you break it?”
“Leo is working on it.”
Ivy looked at Vale.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know current location.”
Ryan’s expression warned him.
Vale raised a hand.
“I knew the old one. Beaufort County. South Carolina. Alias Naomi Mercer. Victor changed safe locations every 18 months.”
Ivy stared.
Naomi Mercer.
A stranger’s name attached to her mother’s face.
Ryan asked, “How do you know this?”
Vale smiled bitterly.
“Because Victor and I were partners longer than you have been enemies with me.”
Ryan’s eyes hardened.
“Partners in what?”
“The part of Gabriel’s empire he wanted to close.”
There it was.
Vale did not pretend innocence.
He had helped move dirty money.
Bribe officials.
Use art shipments as cover.
Victor controlled docks and enforcement.
Vale controlled buyers and political money.
Gabriel, according to Vale, had built parts of the system and then decided he wanted out after Ryan’s mother died.
“He got sentimental,” Vale said.
Ryan’s face became dangerous.
Vale corrected himself.
“He got clear.”
“That is better.”
Vale continued.
“Gabriel began collecting proof against everyone, including himself. He planned to cut a federal deal.”
Ivy looked at Ryan.
“Your father was going to turn himself in?”
“Apparently.”
“He would have lost everything.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Ryan looked toward Gabriel’s portrait outside the vault.
“Maybe he decided everything was already costing too much.”
The answer sounded personal.
Ivy wondered what Ryan believed his own empire cost.
Leo called from upstairs.
He had broken part of the archive index.
There were 7 protected identities.
6 were marked DECEASED.
1 remained active.
MERCER, NAOMI.
A location update had been entered 11 months earlier.
Beaufort County.
A rural postal route outside Port Royal.
Ivy’s hands went cold.
“She’s alive.”
Ryan looked at her.
“The file says she was 11 months ago.”
“Do not make that distinction right now.”
He nodded.
Victor had taken the physical witness file less than 30 minutes before Ryan arrived.
If the paper version carried the same address, he had a lead.
Ryan ordered 2 vehicles.
Vale tried to stand.
“You need me.”
Ryan looked at him.
“No.”
“Victor will have men.”
“So do I.”
“He thinks like Gabriel.”
Ryan’s expression changed.
“No. He taught me to think like him.”
Vale smiled faintly.
“That is what should worry you.”
They left Vale with medical help and 2 guards.
Ivy rode beside Ryan this time.
Neither spoke for the first 20 minutes.
The highway stretched dark beyond the windshield.
Ivy watched roadside lights pass.
Every mile made anger more complicated.
If Lena lived, Ivy wanted to see her.
If Lena lived, Ivy wanted to scream at her.
If Lena lived, Ivy wanted to be 15 again and sit at the kitchen table while her mother drew faces on junk mail.
All 3 desires could exist in the same body.
She hated that.
Ryan drove himself.
Marcus and Leo followed.
“You usually have people do this for you,” Ivy said eventually.
“Drive?”
“Yes.”
“I needed fewer people in the car.”
She looked at him.
“Because I am delightful?”
“No.”
“Rude.”
“Because you are allowed to be angry without an audience.”
Ivy looked out the window again.
That was almost kindness.
It made her more dangerous than sympathy would have.
“Were you angry when your father died?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“At him?”
Ryan was quiet for a while.
“Yes.”
Ivy turned.
“I thought I was supposed to be angry at whoever killed him. But he had spent years building a life that made murder an ordinary possibility.”
Ryan’s hands tightened on the wheel.
“I hated him for leaving me with it.”
“The empire?”
“The questions.”
Ivy understood that more than she wanted to.
At 12:41 a.m., they turned onto a narrow road lined with pine trees.
The address belonged to a small single-story house with a screened porch and a light over the kitchen window.
No black SUVs.
No guards visible.
No sign Victor had arrived.
Ryan stopped the car 100 yards away.
Marcus and Leo moved around the property first.
2 minutes later, Marcus called.
“One occupant. Female. No immediate threat.”
Ivy could not move.
Ryan waited.
He did not tell her to hurry.
That mattered.
Finally she opened the door.
The gravel sounded too loud beneath her shoes.
She walked toward the house.
A shadow moved behind the kitchen curtain.
The door opened.
A woman stepped onto the porch.
Gray had entered her dark curls.
Her shoulders were thinner.
There were lines around her eyes that Ivy did not remember.
But the way she held herself was unchanged.
Weight on the left foot.
Right hand gripping the doorframe when nervous.
Ivy had inherited that habit.
The woman looked at her.
Her face broke.
“Ivy.”
The voice crossed 9 years in 1 breath.
Ivy stopped at the bottom of the steps.
She could not speak.
Lena covered her mouth with both hands.
“Oh, baby.”
“No.”
The word came out before Ivy decided to say it.
Lena froze.
“Do not call me that.”
Tears filled Lena’s eyes.
Ivy climbed 1 step.
“You were dead.”
“I know.”
“I buried you.”
“I know.”
“I talked to an urn.”
Lena started crying.
Ivy did not move closer.
“Do you know how insane that sentence sounds? You know?”
“I wanted to tell you.”
“For 9 years?”
“I watched you from a distance.”
Ivy went still.
“What?”
Lena realized the mistake immediately.
“I checked on you.”
“How?”
“Caroline sent photographs sometimes. News. She never told me anything that could expose you.”
Ivy felt betrayed in a new direction.
“Caroline knew?”
“No. Not where I was. She sent things through an old contact.”
Ryan remained several yards behind Ivy.
He said nothing.
Lena noticed him.
Her expression changed.
“Gabriel’s boy.”
Ryan’s face tightened slightly.
“Ryan.”
“You look like him.”
“So I’m told.”
Lena looked past him toward the road.
“Victor found the archive.”
“Yes,” Ryan said.
Fear entered her face.
“Then he knows.”
Ivy stepped closer.
“Knows what?”
Lena looked at her daughter.
“The ledger isn’t in the archive.”
Ryan came up the steps.
“Where is it?”
Lena shook her head.
“I moved it before I disappeared.”
“Where?”
She looked at Ivy.
And Ivy understood before she answered.
“No.”
Lena’s eyes filled again.
“I hid it where Victor would never think to look.”
Ivy’s voice was flat.
“Do not say my paintings.”
“Not yours.”
“Then where?”
Lena whispered, “Mine.”
Ivy stared.
Lena continued.
“The last painting I ever made. The unfinished one.”
Ivy remembered a canvas wrapped in brown paper in the storage unit.
She had never opened it.
On the paper, Lena had written only 2 words.
NOT YET.
Ivy’s heart began pounding.
“That canvas is in Savannah.”
Lena’s face went white.
“Where?”
“My storage unit.”
Ryan turned toward Marcus.
Before he could speak, Ivy’s phone rang.
Unknown number.
She answered.
Victor Adler’s voice came through calmly.
“Good evening, Ivy.”
Ryan went still.
Victor continued.
“I assume you found your mother.”
Lena closed her eyes.
Ivy gripped the phone.
“What do you want?”
“You already know.”
“The painting.”
“Yes.”
Ivy looked at Lena.
Victor’s voice softened.
“Bring me Lena’s final painting by noon tomorrow.”
“And if I don’t?”
A pause.
May you like
Then Victor said, “Ask Ryan what happens to witnesses when an Adler decides they have become expensive.”
The line went dead.
