Chapter 3 - THE SILVER WATCH
Viktor read the sentence twice.
Then a third time.
Mara watched the strongest man in the room become very still.
Not angry.
Still.
There was a difference.
“Who is the third man?” she asked.
Viktor took the photograph carefully.
“Emil Pierce.”
“The Pierce trying to force tonight’s vote?”
“His father.”
Mara felt the mystery expand instead of shrink.
“Was Emil involved in your father’s murder?”
“I don’t know.”
“But my grandmother did.”
“Apparently.”
Daniel stood awkwardly beside Mara’s kitchen counter.
“I feel like I should remind both of you that I came because I didn’t want Mara alone with a dangerous man.”
He looked at the photograph.
“This has gone significantly beyond my training.”
Mara barely heard him.
The silver watch.
She had seen it.
Not on Ilona.
On her mother.
Years after Ilona died, Mara’s mother had kept a little wooden box beneath her bed.
A rosary.
Foreign coins.
A wedding ring too small for her finger.
And a heavy silver watch that no longer worked.
Three months before Mara’s mother died, the box had disappeared.
Mara had assumed her mother sold everything to pay medical bills.
Then she remembered the paper ticket.
The winter coat had not been the only thing she kept.
Mara went to her bedroom and pulled a battered envelope from her nightstand.
Inside were hospital receipts, her mother’s death certificate, and several old payment stubs.
At the bottom was a pawn ticket.
Queens Boulevard Loan & Jewelry.
Item: antique silver wristwatch.
Daniel looked over her shoulder.
“Please tell me that date is recent.”
“Eleven months ago.”
Viktor checked the expiration terms.
“Twelve-month redemption.”
Mara exhaled.
“Then it might still be there.”
The council vote could wait exactly seventeen minutes.
The pawn shop was twelve minutes away.
Viktor made one call—not mysterious, not whispered—and instructed his council secretary to challenge the vote using the translation discrepancy.
“Delay it.”
“For how long?” the secretary asked.
“An hour.”
“That will be difficult.”
“Make it difficult for Pierce too.”
They reached the pawn shop at 9:03.
The gate was halfway down.
Mara ducked beneath it before the owner could finish closing.
“I need to redeem something.”
“We’re closed.”
“Please.”
The owner, a tired man named Sal, stared at her.
Then at Viktor entering behind her.
Sal immediately reopened the gate.
Mara almost laughed.
Money might not solve everything.
Fear apparently handled store hours.
Sal typed the ticket number.
His expression changed.
“That item was scheduled for display tomorrow.”
Mara’s knees weakened.
“But you still have it?”
“Yeah.”
Sal returned carrying a small velvet tray.
The watch looked exactly as Mara remembered.
Heavy.
Silver.
Scratched around the clasp.
A tiny Hungarian crown was engraved beneath the winding knob.
Mara reached for her wallet.
“How much?”
“Eight hundred forty-two.”
Her hand stopped.
She had forty-seven dollars.
Viktor placed cash on the counter.
“No.”
He looked at her.
“It belonged to your grandmother.”
“Which means I pay for it.”
“With what?”
Mara hated that question.
Not because it was cruel.
Because it was accurate.
“I’ll pay you back.”
“No.”
“I’m not taking charity from you.”
“Then consider it repayment.”
“For what?”
“For a woman pulling a twelve-year-old boy through broken glass.”
Mara could not answer that.
She took the watch.
Outside, Daniel returned to Sterling House after making Mara promise to text him before midnight.
Viktor’s car remained at the curb.
Mara stood beneath the pharmacy lights turning the watch between her fingers.
“It doesn’t open,” she said.
“It should.”
“You’ve seen it before?”
“As a boy.”
Viktor pointed toward the crown symbol.
“My father had the same mark on his signet ring.”
Mara pressed the engraving.
Nothing happened.
She tried winding the mechanism.
The hands remained frozen at 2:16.
Viktor frowned.
“Two-sixteen.”
“What?”
“That was the time my father was shot.”
Mara looked at him.
“You remember the exact minute?”
“I remember everything about that night.”
She tried pulling the winding knob outward.
It clicked once.
The back plate loosened.
Inside was no money.
No document.
Just a tiny brass key.
Stamped into it was the number 317.
Mara stared.
“Does that mean anything?”
“No.”
She turned the watch over again.
Something had been scratched inside the back casing.
Four words.
In Hungarian.
Trust the girl, not blood.
Viktor read them.
His face hardened.
“Ilona wrote that?”
“The letters look like hers.”
“Who is ‘the girl’?”
“I have no idea.”
Viktor looked toward the traffic.
“Neither do I.”
Then Mara noticed something he had missed.
There was dried blue paint along one edge of the key.
She recognized the color.
Her grandmother’s house in Ohio had possessed cabinets painted that exact ugly shade of blue.
But the house had been sold twelve years earlier.
Most of its contents had been moved to a storage company after Ilona entered assisted living.
Mara had paid the storage bill until her mother got sick.
Then she had stopped.
The unit had supposedly been auctioned.
She said this aloud.
Viktor’s expression darkened.
“Which company?”
“Tri-State Storage.”
“Where?”
“Jersey City.”
He pulled out his phone.
Mara stopped him.
“The unit is gone.”
“Perhaps.”
“You think my grandmother somehow planned for us to find a key twenty years later?”
“I think Ilona Nagy wrote a warning inside a watch and predicted I would eventually come looking for it.”
He looked at the key.
“I am done underestimating her.”
They drove to Viktor’s office instead.
The council meeting had been postponed until midnight.
Barely three hours.
His office occupied the top floor of an old freight building overlooking the Hudson.
It was less extravagant than Mara expected.
Dark wood.
Paper files.
Maps.
A photograph of Viktor’s father.
And against one wall, a row of old steel lockboxes salvaged from the original Kovacs shipping office.
Mara stopped.
The boxes were painted blue.
Most had brass numbers.
Viktor followed her gaze.
“My father’s old records.”
Mara walked slowly along them.
Then 317.
Her heart began pounding.
“You said you didn’t know what the number meant.”
“I didn’t.”
“You own the box.”
“I inherited a building full of things I never opened.”
Mara slid the key into the lock.
It turned.
Inside were no contracts.
There was another photograph.
A ledger.
And a child’s red wool mitten, stained black along one edge.
Viktor stopped breathing.
Mara looked at him.
“What is it?”
He picked up the mitten with shaking fingers.
“I was wearing these the night my father died.”
Beneath it lay a single handwritten page.
Viktor unfolded it.
Ilona’s handwriting again.
This time the message was addressed to him.
Viktor—
If you are reading this, then you finally found Mara.
Do not make the mistake your father made.
Protect the custodian.
Mara frowned.
“The custodian?”
Viktor opened the ledger.
His eyes moved across the first page.
Then he looked at Mara in disbelief.
“You don’t work for me.”
“I’m aware.”
“No.”
He turned the ledger toward her.
Beside Ilona Nagy’s name was a percentage.
18%.
May you like
Viktor spoke quietly.
“Mara, you own part of the trust Pierce is trying to take.”
