On Christmas Eve, he called me from the hospital and told me he would not be able to come to work in the morning — Killian lost color

On Christmas Eve I was standing in the hospital foyer when I said only one sentence to Killian Ashcroft and realized that for the first time I was truly afraid of his answer.

“Sir, forgive me,” I said before I could catch my breath. “I will not be able to set the dining room in order tomorrow morning. The housekeeper will have to find someone else.”

For several seconds only a faint hiss could be heard in the phone. The white light above me flickered, my left wrist was in a hard plaster brace, and my cheek burned as if I had held my skin against fire. But I was still thinking about making sure that the table set for twelve people would not remain unfinished in the morning.

“Where are you?” Killian asked.

“That is not important.”

“Mara.”

For the first time I heard in his voice not an order, but something more dangerous. Fear.

“Please, sir, do not spoil your Christmas. I will simply be late.”

The conversation lasted exactly eleven seconds. Then I hung up.

I knew that only three people called that number. Killian’s brother, his lawyer, and the man to whom the entire Boston harbor obeyed. None of them should have known that I, a simple cleaner, kept that number on a small piece of paper hidden in the cover of an old cookbook.

I sat down on a plastic chair in the hospital waiting room. The shoulder of my coat was torn. In my pocket lay my small copper sewing box, the one my mother had left me before she died. A small bird and the words “Return home” were engraved on the lid. I touched its edge with my fingers and convinced myself that everything was still in my hands.

Two hours earlier, two men had met me in the street. One pressed me against a wall, the other took my bag and threw everything inside it onto the pavement. I had no money. No jewelry. Only keys, a work card, and what they were actually looking for.

But they did not find it.

Where I had hidden it, I could not tell anyone. Not yet.

The hospital door opened at midnight and Killian came in alone. He was accompanied neither by a guard, nor a driver, nor his famous shadows. Snow drops fell from his black coat. When the doctor saw him, he lowered his head, and the nurse squeezed the pen in her hand so tightly that her fingers turned white.

When Killian reached me, he said nothing. He simply stopped in front of me and fixed his eyes on my swollen face.

“Show me your hand,” he said at last.

“They have already wrapped it.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you asking me?”

His jaw tightened. And suddenly I realized that for the first time in three years I was looking at his face as a person looks at a person, and not as a servant looks at a master.

“Who did it?” he asked.

“I did not see.”

That was a lie.

He knew that I was lying. I knew that he knew. But neither of us wanted to say aloud that night what frightened us both.

Killian waved to the doctor and led me aside.

“We are going home.”

“I cannot come to work tomorrow.”

“There is no work tomorrow.”

“Your house exists.”

This time something broke in his eyes.

Twenty minutes later we entered his mansion. A Christmas tree shone in the foyer, but an unusual silence stood in the house. Killian had sent all the staff on leave that same evening. I knew this. That was why I knew that the attack on me in the street could not have been accidental.

He opened the door of a small room in the west corridor, where the duty schedule hung. With his finger he found my initials. M. D. was repeated on almost every holiday.

“Three years,” he whispered. “And I did not even know what you were doing here.”

“You never asked.”

I saw my sewing box on the table. I had left it at home and was certain it was in my bag. Killian leaned toward it, but did not put his hand on the box.

“Were they looking for this?” he asked.

My heart rose into my throat.

“No.”

“Then what?”

Suddenly the lock of the door at the end of the corridor turned. Killian immediately stepped in front of me. His hand went inside his coat, and I leaned against the wall.

The door opened slowly.

Lawyer Nolan entered, holding a dark leather folder. He looked first at Killian, then at me, and then placed the folder on the table.

“Before you decide anything, you must see this,” he said, and reached toward the lock…

…Nolan’s fingers touched the lock, but Killian grabbed him by the wrist.

“Who let you in here?” he asked.

“You called me.”

“I was at the hospital.”

“That is exactly why I called you.”

Nolan slowly freed his hand. His face was always calm, but that night his upper lip trembled slightly. I noticed it. Killian did too.

The folder lay on the table. Tiny drops of rain glittered on the dark leather surface, as if Nolan had had to run to reach the house.

“First tell me why your sewing box was in this room,” Killian said.

“Because I hid it here.”

Nolan turned his head toward me.

“What were you hiding?”

“The thing because of which two men were looking for my bag.”

Killian took one step toward me.

“Mara, what did you bring into this house?”

“Nothing. Here I only found what already existed.”

My voice sounded calm, but my knees were trembling. For three years I had known every door, drawer, and secret passage in this house. Already in the first month I realized that at night a person entered Killian’s study who did not open the window and left no muddy footprints on the floor. Then I learned that several pages disappeared from his financial records every Friday.

I was not looking for a secret. The secret found me.

“Read this,” Nolan told Killian.

Killian opened the folder. Inside lay several photographs, a bank statement, and a small memory card. At the sight of it I felt coldness in my stomach.

“Is this from the study?” Killian asked.

“No,” Nolan answered. “We took this from the recordings made in your harbor.”

Killian picked up the first photograph. In the picture his brother, Darren, stood at the door of a warehouse at two o’clock at night. Beside him was a man I knew.

“That is Rose,” I said.

Nolan looked sharply at me.

“How do you know?”

“He was a driver before his surname changed.”

Killian raised his head.

“What do you mean?”

I stared at the room’s door. Five steps away, an old bell rope hung on the wall. Its end looked worn like fingers. I had had to touch it so many times to announce to the guests that dinner was ready, as if my life depended precisely on pulling that rope.

“Rose is the surname of the man who killed my father,” I said at last. “At that time he had another name.”

Silence fell in the room.

Killian placed the photograph on the table.

“Who was your father?”

“Your father’s chief accountant.”

Nolan lowered his eyes. Killian did not move.

My father disappeared twelve years ago. Officially they said that he had run away with money. My mother could not bear the news. And I was left only with his sewing box and one sentence he told me before his death: “If you ever get into the Ashcrofts’ house, listen to the walls.”

Three years ago I came to this house as a cleaner.

Killian slowly stood up.

“You did not come here by accident.”

“No.”

“You stayed close to me for three years to investigate your father’s case?”

“At first it was so.”

“And then?”

His question was asked so quietly that it struck me more strongly than shouting.

“Then I learned that you had also been deceived.”

Nolan turned the memory card between his fingers.

“This recording shows who was giving the orders. But the video is locked. Only one person has the code.”

Killian shifted his gaze to me.

I looked at my sewing box. The engraved wing of the bird flickered under the lamp.

“I do not have the code,” I said.

“Then who has it?” Killian asked.

At that moment the old telephone hanging on the wall rang. In the house this line went only to one room. The room that had been locked for five years.

Killian picked up the receiver.

“I’m listening.”

There was silence on the other side for several seconds. Then a woman’s voice sounded.

“If Mara is alive, tell her that they are still waiting for her father…”

Killian’s face turned completely pale.

And I realized that my father’s story had never been finished…

…the receiver froze in Killian’s hand.

“Who are you?” he asked.

The woman did not answer. She said only one word, in such a quiet voice that nevertheless everyone heard it.

“Basement.”

Then the line went dead.

Nolan looked at the telephone as if trying to draw an answer out of it. Killian turned toward me.

“Did you know that your father was alive?”

“No. I only found his records.”

“Where?”

“Behind the old wall in the basement.”

Killian locked the doors. At one o’clock at night three people went down to the lower floor of the mansion. The basement smelled of dampness, dark streaks of water ran down the walls, and old Christmas decorations lay on the floor. I went first, because I knew where the brick was that stood half a centimeter farther forward than the others.

I took a small flat needle from my sewing box. I inserted it into the crack in the wall and carefully pulled the brick out.

Inside lay a package wrapped in oilcloth.

Killian inhaled deeply.

“You kept this for three years?”

“No. I searched for it for three years.”

We opened the package. Inside were a handwritten notebook, an old photograph, and a small audio-recording device. In the photograph two men stood against the background of the harbor. One was Killian’s father. The other was my father, Alexi Danelia.

Killian read the inscription on the back of the photograph.

“If you found this, do not trust Darren.”

Nolan closed his eyes.

“Darren has been running the company for twenty years.”

“That is exactly why he arranged everything,” I said.

There was only one recording on the device. Killian turned it on. First came crackling, then a man’s voice.

“Alex, we cannot take the book away. If Killian finds out that Darren was transferring the money, everything is over.”

The second voice was my father’s.

“Your son must know.”

Then came the voice I had first heard three years earlier in Killian’s uncle’s study, when they called him Rose.

“Neither son must know anything. If you have the recording, both families will collapse.”

Killian stepped back. He leaned against the wall with his shoulder. For the first time I saw on his face not power, but a person from whom his entire past had been taken in one moment.

“My father knew,” he said.

“Yes.”

“And Darren?”

“Darren knew everything. The money, the accounts, the routes. He knew that my father kept the recording. On the night Father disappeared, it was Darren’s car that stood near his house.”

Nolan opened the notebook. Dates, amounts, and signatures were written on every page. On the last page there was one sentence: “The evidence will be with the person in the house whom everyone fails to notice.”

Killian slowly looked at me.

“This is about you.”

“Probably.”

“Did Father know that you would ever come?”

“Mother knew. Your father did not.”

At that moment Nolan’s phone rang. He looked at the screen and his face changed.

“What happened?” Killian asked.

“Darren is coming to the mansion. With the police.”

“With the police?”

“He says that you kidnapped Mara Danelia and that you have illegal materials in your possession.”

Killian could not laugh, but his lips formed a bitter smile.

“He knows that we found the recording.”

“And if he knows, why is he giving us time until now?” I asked.

Nolan’s phone lit up again. This time it was a message. He read it and immediately came toward me.

“Someone sent your recording from the hospital cameras. It shows that the attackers spoke with you.”

“Who sent it?”

Nolan showed the screen to Killian. The message had only one sentence attached.

“Their boss is here, but he does not know whom he serves.”

Heavy footsteps sounded above the basement. Then the door closed.

Killian took the notebook in his hand and whispered to me:

“Mara, if this is the person I am thinking of, then another traitor is hiding in the room with us…”

And exactly then someone on the upper floor called my name…