Chapter 2 - The Photograph Inside the Book
Sophie didn't open the novel again until midnight.
That was partly because she was afraid of damaging it.
Mostly, it was because she was afraid of understanding why Nicholas Falcone's gift mattered so much.
Her apartment was small enough that the kitchen table served as dining room, office, laundry station, and occasional bookshelf. Rain tapped against the fire escape while Sophie sat beneath the yellow light above the stove.
The first edition rested before her.
She ran one finger across the cover.
Nicholas had remembered.
That should not have mattered.
It did.
Her phone had remained almost completely silent on her birthday. Her older brother had sent a text at eleven forty-three that evening.
Sorry. Crazy day. Happy birthday.
Her father had been gone for twelve years.
Her mother had died when Sophie was seventeen.
Friends had moved, married, had children, changed jobs, and gradually become names she liked on social media.
Sophie understood adulthood.
People got busy.
Still, there was something humiliating about buying your own cupcake and telling the cashier it wasn't really your birthday because you didn't want the pitying smile.
Then Nicholas Falcone had walked into her library.
Nicholas Falcone.
A man newspapers described carefully.
A man strangers described in whispers.
And he had remembered.
Sophie opened the book.
A photograph slipped out.
She stared at it.
It was old.
Not antique, exactly, but old enough that the colors had faded around the edges.
Three people stood outside a brick building.
One was a younger Nicholas.
Sophie recognized him immediately despite the absence of the controlled expression he wore now. He looked perhaps nineteen.
Beside him stood another young man with lighter hair.
Between them was a woman.
Sophie stopped breathing.
The woman looked familiar.
Not because Sophie knew her.
Because around the woman's neck hung a silver pendant shaped like a tiny compass.
Sophie instinctively reached beneath the collar of her sleep shirt.
Her fingers closed around her own pendant.
A tiny silver compass.
The last thing her mother had given her.
Sophie looked at the photograph again.
The pendant in the picture was identical.
On the back, someone had written three words.
Evelyn knew everything.
Sophie stared at the handwriting.
Her mother's name had been Evelyn Carter.
She grabbed her phone.
For several seconds she simply looked at Nicholas's number.
He had given it to her before leaving the library.
“For emergencies,” he had said.
She had raised an eyebrow.
“What kind of emergency requires a mafia boss?”
“You'd be surprised.”
She had saved the number under Nicholas—Crackers.
Now she pressed call.
He answered before the second ring.
“Sophie?”
No hello.
No hesitation.
She stood.
“Why is there a photograph of my mother inside the book you gave me?”
Silence.
Not confusion.
Silence.
Sophie felt cold.
“You knew.”
“Sophie—”
“You knew who she was.”
“Lock your door.”
Her anger disappeared beneath something sharper.
“What?”
“Lock your door.”
“Nicholas, answer me.”
“Is it locked?”
She crossed the apartment and turned the deadbolt.
“Yes.”
“Windows?”
“I'm on the fourth floor.”
“Windows.”
She checked them.
“Locked.”
“Good.”
His voice had changed.
The man who had joked about voicemail was gone.
This was the Nicholas Falcone everyone else knew.
“What aren't you telling me?”
“I didn't put that photograph in the book.”
Sophie stopped.
“What?”
“The dealer delivered the book sealed in protective wrapping. My people inspected the exterior, but I specifically told them not to damage it.”
She looked at the photograph again.
“Then who put it there?”
“I don't know.”
“That isn't comforting.”
“It wasn't intended to be.”
She heard movement on his end.
A door opening.
A man's voice.
Nicholas giving an order she couldn't understand.
Then he returned.
“Don't leave your apartment.”
Sophie laughed once, nervously.
“You can't just order me around.”
“Tonight I can.”
“No, actually, you can't.”
“Sophie.”
Something in his voice stopped her.
Not authority.
Fear.
Nicholas Falcone was afraid.
Not for himself.
For her.
“What did my mother know?”
“I don't know everything.”
“That's not an answer.”
“It is the only one I can give you over the phone.”
“Then come here.”
Another silence.
“You don't understand what you're asking.”
“I understand someone hid a photograph of my dead mother inside a birthday present you bought me.”
Her hand tightened around the phone.
“And apparently you knew her.”
“I knew of her.”
“Difference?”
“A significant one.”
“Nicholas.”
“I'll explain when I arrive.”
The call ended.
Sophie stared at the screen.
“Rude.”
Three hard knocks sounded at her door.
She froze.
Nicholas could not possibly have arrived that quickly.
Another knock.
“Sophie Carter?”
Male voice.
She backed away.
“Who is it?”
“Building maintenance.”
“At midnight?”
“We have a water leak downstairs.”
Her heartbeat accelerated.
She glanced toward the kitchen.
The photograph remained on the table.
“Sophie?”
The doorknob moved.
Slowly.
Someone was testing it.
She stepped backward.
Her phone vibrated.
Nicholas.
She answered silently.
“Don't speak,” he said.
She pressed the phone to her ear.
“Someone is outside your apartment.”
Sophie closed her eyes.
Of course he knew.
“How?”
“I have a man in your building.”
That should have terrified her.
Tonight, it didn't.
The person outside knocked again.
Nicholas spoke calmly.
“Go to your bedroom.”
Sophie moved.
“Lock the door.”
She did.
“Get away from the window.”
She crouched beside the bed.
From the living room came a metallic sound.
Someone working at the lock.
Sophie whispered, “Nicholas.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“My man is coming upstairs.”
The front door suddenly crashed inward.
Sophie clapped a hand over her mouth.
Footsteps entered her apartment.
Slow.
Deliberate.
A drawer opened.
Another.
The stranger was searching.
Not stealing.
Searching.
For the photograph?
Sophie looked down.
She had carried it into the bedroom without realizing it.
The footsteps moved closer.
Her bedroom doorknob turned.
Locked.
A shadow appeared beneath the door.
Then Nicholas's voice came through the phone.
“Get down.”
A violent crash exploded through the apartment.
Someone shouted.
Furniture overturned.
Sophie covered her head.
Another impact.
Then silence.
“Sophie?”
This voice did not come from the phone.
It came from outside her bedroom.
Nicholas.
She unlocked the door.
He stood in her hallway wearing a black overcoat over an open-collar white shirt, breathing harder than she had ever seen him breathe.
Two men restrained a stranger near the kitchen.
Nicholas looked at Sophie.
His expression changed immediately.
He crossed the distance between them.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
He checked anyway.
Her face.
Her shoulders.
Her arms.
“Nicholas.”
He stopped.
She held up the photograph.
“Tell me who she was to you.”
His eyes lowered to it.
For the first time, Sophie saw something in his expression that looked almost like grief.
“Your mother saved my life.”
Sophie stared.
“What?”
“When I was nineteen.”
He took the photograph carefully.
“My father had enemies. One of them paid someone inside our organization to kill me.”
Sophie glanced toward the restrained intruder.
“What does that have to do with my mother?”
“Evelyn worked as an accountant for one of my father's legitimate companies.”
“My mother was a school secretary.”
“Afterward.”
Nicholas turned the photograph over.
“She discovered money being moved through false accounts. She warned me the night before the attack.”
Sophie felt as though the floor had shifted beneath her.
“My mother never told me.”
“She wasn't supposed to.”
“Who is the other man?”
Nicholas looked at the photograph.
His jaw tightened.
“My brother.”
“You have a brother?”
“Had.”
The word landed heavily.
“What happened?”
“He died six months after this picture was taken.”
Nicholas handed the photograph back.
“Officially, a car accident.”
“And unofficially?”
“I've spent fifteen years trying to answer that.”
Sophie looked at the handwritten message.
Evelyn knew everything.
“Nicholas.”
He met her eyes.
“Was my mother involved?”
“I don't know.”
“You're lying.”
His expression barely changed.
Sophie stepped closer.
“You do this thing.”
“What thing?”
“Your face goes completely still whenever you don't want someone to know what you're thinking.”
Despite everything, something almost resembling admiration passed through his eyes.
“You've known me four days.”
“And?”
“And nobody else has noticed that in twenty years.”
“Maybe everyone else is too busy being terrified.”
Nicholas looked away.
Sophie held up the photograph.
“What did she know?”
Before he could answer, one of his men approached.
“Boss.”
Nicholas turned.
The man held something recovered from the intruder's jacket.
A photograph.
Newer.
Taken recently.
Nicholas accepted it.
Sophie saw his expression harden.
“What is it?”
He didn't answer.
She took it from his hand.
The picture showed Sophie leaving the library.
Taken from across the street.
Another photograph was beneath it.
Sophie at a grocery store.
Another.
Sophie walking home.
Another.
Sophie sitting beside Nicholas in the courthouse.
On the back of the final photograph was a handwritten sentence.
The daughter has the key.
Sophie stared at it.
“I don't have a key.”
Nicholas slowly looked toward the silver compass around her neck.
May you like
“Yes,” he said.
“I think you do.”
