Chapter 5
I stopped asking Ione questions in the dining room.
I took her downstairs.
Not to the basement.
To my father's old study.
No windows.
One door.
Thick walls.
Merritt used to complain that the room made him feel buried.
That night I hoped it did.
He had been found near the lower service corridor.
Graham and Daniel were found with him.
All three were alive.
All three were brought in separately.
Ione sat first.
Merritt across from her.
For the first time since their wedding forty-one years earlier, I didn't let them sit beside each other.
I placed the silver coin between them.
Merritt stared at it.
Ione closed her eyes.
That answered one question.
“You know it.”
Neither spoke.
I looked at Merritt.
“Start.”
“No.”
“Fine.”
I looked at Ione.
“Six men entered my home.”
She stared at the floor.
“One climbed toward my son's room.”
Her face tightened.
“You drugged my wine.”
Nothing.
“You humiliated Nash because he repeated something you didn't want him repeating.”
Her eyes filled again.
Then Merritt said:
“She was protecting him.”
I looked at him.
Ione snapped:
“Shut up.”
Interesting.
I leaned forward.
“Protecting Nash by pouring dinner over his head?”
Merritt looked at Ione.
She looked away.
He sighed.
“She wanted him removed from the room.”
I stared.
“What?”
“He wouldn't leave.”
I thought back.
Nash had refused twice when a servant offered to take him upstairs.
I had assumed he wanted to stay beside me.
Maybe he had understood more than I realized.
Ione finally spoke.
“I told him to eat elsewhere.”
“On the floor?”
Her face tightened.
“I needed him gone.”
“So you humiliated him.”
“I needed you angry.”
That stopped me.
I sat back.
“You wanted what happened?”
She looked at me.
“You always move Nash when you're angry.”
I remembered.
Arguments.
Meetings.
Any threat.
My first instinct was always to send him upstairs with Elias.
Safe.
Away from me.
Away from the room.
“You wanted me to send him upstairs.”
“Yes.”
My hand closed into a fist.
“One of your men was waiting upstairs.”
“No.”
That came instantly.
Real fear.
“No, Cassian.”
“Then whose man?”
Silence.
Merritt looked at the coin.
I followed his eyes.
“Whose?”
He whispered:
“Silas Wren.”
I knew the name.
Everybody in our world did.
Silas had been my father's closest rival twenty years earlier.
They fought.
Men died.
Then suddenly the war stopped.
No treaty.
No handshake.
Just silence.
Silas disappeared west.
I was sixteen.
“What does Wren want with Nash?”
Ione whispered:
“Not Nash.”
I stared at her.
“The coin was in his hand.”
“He wants you.”
“Then why mark my son?”
Merritt laughed bitterly.
“Because that's how you move a father.”
I stood so fast the chair struck the wall.
Ione flinched.
Good.
I leaned over the table.
“You brought Silas Wren's men into my house to get to me?”
Merritt said:
“We brought two.”
“Six coats.”
His face changed.
There.
The number surprised him.
Ione looked at him.
“You said two.”
“I arranged two.”
“Then who brought the other four?”
Neither knew.
That scared me more than confession.
I looked toward the door.
“Bring Graham.”
The old capo entered three minutes later.
He looked tired.
Not afraid.
Men his age usually weren't afraid until the thing they worshipped disappeared.
“Six men,” I said.
He said nothing.
“Merritt says two.”
Graham's eyes moved toward Merritt.
Wrong.
I saw it.
“Four were yours.”
Silence.
Ione whispered:
“Graham?”
He finally looked at me.
“Four were mine.”
“Why?”
“Because two weren't enough.”
“For what?”
“To finish what your father refused to finish.”
I stared.
“What?”
Graham smiled.
“You still think Silas Wren was your father's enemy.”
The room went quiet.
“He wasn't.”
Ione's face changed.
Not surprise.
Recognition.
I turned toward her.
“You knew.”
She didn't answer.
Graham continued.
“Your father and Wren made a deal twenty years ago.”
I stepped closer.
“What deal?”
May you like
Graham looked at Nash's silver coin on the table.
“The kind that was supposed to end with you dead before you ever became boss.”
