I told myself I could work there without becoming involved in Nico’s darker business dealings.
I would organize correspondence, manage appointments, and perhaps discover whether his company possessed historical files related to Pier Six.
I had no intention of falling for my employer.
Unfortunately, intentions are not always reliable.
Nico was thirty-nine, broad-shouldered, dark-haired, and incapable of entering a room without changing its atmosphere.
He could intimidate six executives with a glance, yet he remembered that I preferred mint tea when I worked late.
He once drove across Baltimore during a freezing rainstorm because an employee’s elderly mother had been stranded at a hospital.
He also controlled an organization whose influence extended through shipping contracts, protection arrangements, and illegal businesses I deliberately avoided learning about.
Those contradictions made him dangerous in ways his reputation alone never could.
I was attracted to him.
I also knew attraction was a terrible reason to abandon my judgment.
He was my boss, and I had watched too many people confuse his approval with their freedom.
So when Evan Cole asked me to dinner, I said yes.
Evan seemed different.
He was polite, thoughtful, and curious about my life without appearing judgmental.
We had met beside a table of battered mystery novels at the library fundraiser.
He had bought me a paperback after I admitted that my father used to read detective stories aloud during thunderstorms.
He remembered small details.
Perhaps too many.
At the time, I considered that attentiveness charming.
Now, standing in Nico’s office, I began remembering a few questions that hadn’t seemed important before.
Where did I work?
Did my boss personally approve all incoming correspondence?
Was I ever responsible for retrieving historical shipping files?
I had thought Evan was making conversation.
Nico’s expression suggested another possibility.
“Did you tell him about the company archives?” Nico asked.
I stared at him.
“Why would you ask that?”
“Answer me.”
“No.
Not specifically.”
His fingers curled around the back of his chair.
“Cancel the date.”
“Tell me why.”
He remained silent.
I moved toward the door.
“If you want me to trust you, you have to give me something besides an order.”
“Mara, wait.”
He returned to his desk and unlocked the bottom drawer.
I had never seen him open it before.
He removed a yellowed folder, several photographs, and a thin visitor register wrapped in protective paper.
When he spread the photographs across the desk, my pulse became painfully loud.
The first showed a collapsed warehouse beneath a cloud of smoke.
The second showed the same building before the fire, with its white number six painted beside the loading doors.
I recognized it immediately.
Pier Six.
My father’s last workplace.
Nico placed the visitor register beneath the photograph.
“Evan Cole signed into Pier Six forty minutes before it burned.”
I stared at the handwriting.
The name was unmistakable.
“Where did you get this?” I whispered.
“Luca kept his own records.
He didn’t trust the electronic logs.”
“Your brother?”
Nico turned over another photograph.
Two men stood smiling beside a loading truck.
One was young, handsome, and obviously related to him.
The other wore an old blue jacket with a torn pocket.
I recognized that jacket before I recognized the face.
My father.
My knees weakened.
“That’s Thomas Quinn,” Nico said.
“He worked with
