Chapter 3 - The Christmas Morning Trap
The snow had buried Boston in a quiet, blinding white blanket by the time Christmas morning dawned.
I woke up on the velvet sofa in Ashcroft’s private study, wrapped in a heavy wool blanket, with a cup of hot black coffee waiting on the side table. My wrist throbbed, but the swelling on my face had gone down slightly under a cold compress left there sometime before dawn.
Through the double doors of the study, I could hear the muffled, low rumble of voices echoing from the grand foyer.
"I'm telling you, Killian, the board meeting at the port authority is locked in for tomorrow," a smooth, cultured voice was saying. It was Julian Vance—Ashcroft's right-hand man for over a decade, a man who always wore impeccably tailored suits and smiled with too many teeth. "You shouldn't have spent Christmas Eve chasing after a domestic worker at St. Brendan's. It looks... undisciplined."
I slipped off the sofa, keeping my injured arm tucked safely against my ribs, and crept quietly toward the cracked study door.
Killian stood by the marble fireplace, his expression an absolute mask of stone. "Maeve is more than a domestic worker, Julian. She’s part of this household. And someone tried to break her arm last night looking for a ledger."
"A random mugging, no doubt," Julian replied smoothly, checking his gold Rolex. "The waterfront has gotten rough lately. Speaking of which—did security check the pantry safe? I heard a rumor someone might have tampered with the household accounts."
Silence hung in the grand foyer for three long, agonizing seconds.
Then, Killian’s voice cut through the air like a razor. "How did you know the pantry safe was targeted, Julian?"
May you like
Julian froze halfway toward the coat rack. "What? I... well, you just said someone was looking for a ledger. Naturally, one assumes—"
"I didn't tell you a ledger was kept in the pantry safe," Killian interrupted softly, stepping away from the fireplace. "I told you someone tried to break Maeve's arm looking for a ledger. The only people who knew where the decoy ledger was stored were the men who planted it there."
