Chapter 2 - The Sapphire Coat

The leather seat of the SUV was warm, but I couldn’t stop shivering.

I clutched my mother’s silver pocket watch so tightly the engraved rose bit into my palm.

“How did you get this?” I whispered, staring at the tarnished metal. “Blackridge took this from our apartment hours after she passed away. They said she owed them for the hospice care.”

Nathaniel sat beside me, pouring two glasses of amber liquid from a hidden console. He handed me one.

“Drink,” he commanded gently. “It will stop the shaking.”

I took a sip. It burned down my throat, grounding me.

“I bought the debt,” Nathaniel said, staring out the tinted window at the snow-covered pines blurring past. “Three years ago, when I took over the Pinehaven syndicate, I audited all of Blackridge’s predatory loans. I found your mother’s file. I found the watch.”

“Why?” I asked, searching his face. “You’re a billionaire. Why do you care about a payroll clerk’s mother?”

He turned to look at me, his jaw tightening. “Your mother didn’t just clean cabins for Blackridge, Emma. She was the original deed holder to the White-Pine Valley. The land Grant Holloway currently claims is his. He forged the transfer after she died. Daniel was just the idiot they used to cover up the missing money by pinning it on you.”

The world spun. My mother wasn't just a maid? She owned the valley?

“We have to go to my apartment,” I said suddenly, a cold panic seizing my chest.

“My men are already packing your things,” Nathaniel said calmly. “You are coming to my estate.”

“No!” I shouted, dropping the glass. It didn’t shatter on the thick carpet, but liquid spilled everywhere. “You don’t understand! Leo is there!”

Nathaniel’s eyes narrowed. “Who is Leo?”

“My nephew. My sister’s son,” I gasped, unbuckling my seatbelt. “I’ve been raising him since she died. My babysitter, Mrs. Higgins, is watching him tonight. If Daniel knows I left with you... if Grant knows I’m a liability...”

Nathaniel didn’t ask another question.

He leaned forward and tapped the glass partition. “Change of plans. The laundromat on 4th Street. Move.”

The heavy SUV surged forward, the engine roaring as we tore down the icy mountain roads toward town.

Ten minutes later, we pulled into the alley behind the neon sign of Rudy’s Wash & Dry.

My heart stopped.

The heavy metal door leading up to my second-floor apartment was wide open. The lock was completely shattered, hanging by a single screw.

I didn’t wait for Nathaniel’s guards. I threw the door open and sprinted up the metal stairs in my heels, Nathaniel’s heavy coat billowing around me.

“Leo!” I screamed.

I burst into my tiny living room.

It was destroyed. The couch cushions were slashed. The drawers were ripped from the kitchen counters. Flour and sugar coated the cheap linoleum floor.

Mrs. Higgins was sitting on the floor in the corner, holding a bloody rag to her forehead, weeping.

“Emma,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry. They just kicked the door in.”

“Where is he?” I cried, dropping to my knees beside her. “Where is Leo?”

“I hid him,” she pointed a shaking finger toward the bedroom. “When I heard them coming up the stairs, I shoved him in the closet.”

I scrambled up and ran to my bedroom. The mattress was overturned. The closet doors were ripped off their hinges.

“Leo?” I whispered, dropping to the floor.

From the very back of the dark closet, beneath a pile of winter coats, a tiny six-year-old boy emerged. He was clutching his stuffed dinosaur, his face streaked with silent tears.

“Aunt Em,” he whimpered.

I grabbed him, pulling him into my chest, burying my face in his hair. I squeezed my eyes shut, thanking every star in the sky that he was safe.

Nathaniel filled the doorway. His presence seemed to take up all the oxygen in the tiny, ruined apartment. He looked at the slashed mattress, then down at the terrified little boy in my arms.

“Did you see the men who did this, Leo?” Nathaniel asked, his voice surprisingly soft, completely devoid of the intimidation he had used at the gala.

Leo sniffled, burying his face in my neck. “It was the nice man. The one who brings Mommy coffee.”

Daniel.

Daniel had come here while I was still trapped at the gala.

“They were tearing the place apart,” Mrs. Higgins groaned as one of Nathaniel’s medics began wrapping her head. “They kept yelling about a ledger. They said the girl had to have it.”

I looked at Nathaniel, bewildered. “I don’t have a ledger. I don’t even know what they’re talking about.”

Nathaniel crouched down, his gray eyes scanning the debris on the floor.

He reached out and picked up a torn photograph. It was an old picture of my sister, smiling in front of a rusted pickup truck.

But it wasn’t the picture that caught his attention. It was what had been hidden inside the cheap cardboard backing of the frame, which Daniel had ripped apart.

Nathaniel held up a small, heavy iron key.

My blood ran cold.

“They weren’t looking for a ledger, Emma,” Nathaniel said quietly. “They were looking for what your sister hid before she died.”

Leo suddenly pointed a tiny finger at the key.

“Mommy told me about that key,” Leo whispered into the quiet room.

I stared at my nephew. “What do you mean, Leo?”