“Tell me he was lying.”
Sophie’s voice was barely above a whisper.
Nicholas stood on the sidewalk.
He could have lied.
Sophie saw the possibility cross his face.
That frightened her more than Dominic’s words.
“Nicholas.”
“He was trying to provoke you.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“I know.”
“My father died six years ago. Why would Dominic Falcone know anything about him?”
Nicholas glanced down the street.
“We shouldn’t discuss this outside.”
“Then come upstairs.”
He hesitated.
Sophie laughed without humor.
“You’ve been telling me to go inside for five minutes. Now suddenly you don’t want to?”
He followed her.
Her apartment was small, warm, and lined with books.
Nicholas had been there twice before.
Tonight it felt different.
Sophie walked directly to her bedroom and returned carrying The Garden Beyond Winter.
She placed it on the kitchen table.
“Why this book?”
“Because you wanted it.”
“That answer was enough yesterday.”
“Sophie.”
“Why did Dominic say my father knew your family?”
Nicholas remained standing.
“Your father was an accountant.”
“Yes. For small businesses.”
“Not only small businesses.”
Sophie stared at him.
“What are you talking about?”
“Daniel Carter handled forensic accounting work during the last few years of his career.”
“He audited companies.”
“Yes.”
“Falcone companies?”
Nicholas said nothing.
Her stomach dropped.
“Oh my God.”
“Sophie—”
“You knew who I was at jury duty.”
“No.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I didn’t.”
His answer came sharply.
“I had never seen you before that courthouse.”
“But afterward?”
Nicholas looked at the green book.
“After you told me your father’s name, I recognized it.”
Sophie stepped back.
“You investigated me.”
“I confirmed your identity.”
“That is an incredibly elegant way to say you investigated me.”
“I needed to know whether the connection was coincidence.”
“And was it?”
“Yes.”
“How am I supposed to believe that?”
Nicholas’s expression tightened.
“You probably shouldn’t. Not yet.”
That answer surprised her.
Sophie folded her arms.
“Keep talking.”
Nicholas finally sat.
“Your father audited a shipping company owned by my uncle eighteen years ago. He found irregularities.”
“What kind?”
“Money moving through accounts that shouldn’t have existed.”
“Illegal money?”
“Yes.”
Sophie closed her eyes.
Her father had been gentle.
Quiet.
The kind of man who returned shopping carts even in snowstorms.
She could not imagine him anywhere near organized crime.
“What happened?”
“He reported some of it.”
“To police?”
“To federal investigators.”
Sophie opened her eyes.
“Was he an informant?”
“No. He was a civilian who found something he wasn’t supposed to find.”
“Did your family hurt him?”
The question landed between them.
Nicholas’s face changed.
“No.”
“You answered quickly.”
“Because I know the answer.”
“How?”
“My father found out what Daniel had discovered. He ordered everyone to leave him alone.”
“Why?”
“Because your father had evidence that could damage several people, but he wasn’t trying to destroy anyone. He wanted the illegal accounts closed. My father respected that.”
Sophie laughed bitterly.
“You’re describing organized crime like a disagreement between accountants.”
“I’m describing what happened.”
“And Dominic?”
Nicholas’s eyes darkened.
“Dominic’s father disagreed with mine.”
The room became very quiet.
Sophie looked at the book.
“What does any of this have to do with that?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I found the book through a dealer in Providence. I bought it because you wanted it.”
“Then why did Dominic mention it?”
“That’s what concerns me.”
Sophie opened the cover.
Nothing.
She flipped through pages.
Old paper.
Faded illustrations.
A few pencil marks.
Nicholas moved closer.
“Did you examine it when I gave it to you?”
“I read the first chapter.”
“Anything unusual?”
“No.”
She turned it over.
Nicholas took the book gently.
His fingers traced the spine.
Then stopped.
“What?”
“The binding.”
“What about it?”
“It’s been repaired.”
“It’s old.”
“No. This stitching isn’t old.”
Sophie leaned closer.
He carefully pressed the inner seam.
Something shifted beneath the cloth.
Sophie’s pulse accelerated.
Nicholas found a thin separation beneath the rear endpaper.
Inside was a folded piece of paper.
Neither spoke.
Sophie pulled it free.
The handwriting made her knees weak.
She knew it instantly.
Her father’s.
Daniel Carter had written grocery lists in that handwriting.
Birthday cards.
Notes tucked into her school lunches.
Sophie sat down.
Across the top were three words.
If Sophie finds this—
Her hands began shaking.
Nicholas stepped back.
“This is yours.”
She unfolded it.
Sophie,
If this ever reaches you, then something I hoped would stay buried did not.
I found records connected to Falcone Maritime and several shell companies. Most were destroyed after an agreement was reached, but I kept one copy because one man frightened me more than the others.
Dominic Falcone.
Sophie stopped.
Her eyes lifted.
Nicholas looked equally stunned.
She continued.
Dominic was young then, but he was already moving money without his family’s knowledge. I believed he was building something of his own. I never proved what.
The evidence is not in this book.
The book is the key.
Remember where we used to read when winter came.
I’m sorry for leaving you with this.
Dad.
Sophie lowered the letter.
For several seconds, she could hear nothing except her refrigerator humming.
“The book is the key,” Nicholas said quietly.
Sophie looked at him.
“You didn’t know?”
“No.”
“Swear.”
“I swear.”
She believed him.
And that made everything more complicated.
Nicholas took out his phone.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting you somewhere safe.”
“No.”
“Sophie.”
“I am not being relocated like a piece of evidence.”
“Dominic knows about the book.”
“And apparently so do you.”
His eyes flashed.
“That’s exactly why you should be worried.”
She stood.
“I’m worried about the fact that my dead father hid something from me for eighteen years.”
“Then we figure out what it is.”
“We?”
Nicholas stopped.
Sophie saw something unguarded in his expression.
“Yes,” he said. “We.”
She looked at the note again.
Remember where we used to read when winter came.
A memory surfaced.
Her father taking her across the city during snowstorms.
A grand old building.
Stone lions.
Warm reading rooms.
“The Boston Public Library,” she whispered.
Nicholas frowned.
“Are you sure?”
“When I was a kid, Dad took me there whenever school closed for snow. We had a favorite table.”
“Where?”
“Bates Hall.”
Nicholas checked the time.
“Not tonight.”
“Tomorrow.”
“No.”
“Nicholas.”
“If Dominic knows the clue, he’ll expect you to go.”
“He doesn’t know what the note says.”
“He knew about the book.”
Sophie folded the letter.
“Then how did he know?”
That question followed them into morning.
At nine, Sophie called in sick for the first time in three years.
At ten, she and Nicholas entered the Boston Public Library separately.
Sophie hated that he insisted.
She hated more that she understood why.
Bates Hall looked exactly as she remembered.
Long oak tables.
Green lamps.
High arched ceiling.
Memories hit her unexpectedly.
Her father removing snow from her hair.
Her twelve-year-old hands turning pages.
Hot chocolate afterward.
She walked toward the table they used to share.
Nicholas appeared several minutes later.
Sophie ran her fingers beneath the table.
Nothing.
She checked the nearby shelf.
Nothing.
Then she remembered.
“Dad used to joke that librarians always know where secrets belong.”
“What does that mean?”
She looked at the call-number range near their old table.
The Garden Beyond Winter had a Dewey number from the children’s collection.
But the old edition had once been cataloged differently.
She searched the library database.
A record appeared.
Archived storage.
Nicholas leaned toward the screen.
“Can you access it?”
Sophie looked at him.
“I’m a librarian.”
Twenty minutes later, an employee brought out a storage box containing withdrawn materials donated years earlier.
Inside was an envelope.
Daniel Carter had written one word across it.
WINTER.
Sophie opened it.
A small brass key fell into her palm.
Attached was a number.
Nicholas exhaled.
“Safe-deposit box.”
They located the bank through an old receipt folded behind the key.
The branch still existed.
The box was registered jointly to Daniel Carter and Sophie Carter.
Her father had added her name when she was thirteen.
Sophie almost laughed at the absurdity.
By afternoon, she was sitting inside a private viewing room with Nicholas beside her.
The employee placed box 317 on the table.
Then left.
Sophie inserted the key.
Inside was a flash drive.
A ledger.
And a photograph.
Sophie picked up the photograph first.
Her father stood beside a much younger man.
Nicholas’s father.
Behind them was another figure.
Dominic.
Nicholas opened the ledger.
His expression changed.
“What?”
“These transactions continued.”
“After my father’s audit?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
Nicholas flipped pages.
“Years.”
Sophie inserted the flash drive into an offline laptop provided by the bank.
Files appeared.
Accounts.
Names.
Transfers.
And a recorded video.
Daniel Carter’s face filled the screen.
Older than Sophie remembered from childhood, younger than when he died.
“If you’re watching this,” he began, “then Dominic finally came looking.”
Sophie covered her mouth.
Daniel continued.
“I made a mistake. I thought the Falcone family was the danger. They weren’t. Dominic was.”
Nicholas went completely still.
“He’s been stealing from his own family for years,” Daniel said. “But money isn’t the worst of it. He’s building evidence to frame Nicholas Falcone for everything.”
Sophie turned.
Nicholas stared at the screen.
Her father’s next sentence changed everything.
“And if Nicholas ever sees this, tell him his mother’s death was not an accident.”