Chapter 8 · The Riverfront Registry

Chapter 8: The Second Lock

The suite safe was open when we got back, and the box was still in it. Black, no label on the face, my mother's handwriting on a strip of tape along the lid. Luca didn't ask me to touch it. He lifted it himself, one hand under the base like weight mattered more than secrecy.

"Thirteen steps from that shelf to the service stair," I said. "I counted them the night I gave you the number. You don't get to pretend I won't count them again."

"Count," he said. "That's the part I can't take off you."

He walked. I counted out loud so he couldn't rush the number into something polite. One at the carpet. Four at the door he had sealed on me the first night. Nine where the hall turned and the river light stopped. Thirteen at a second door I had never been given a key for. Steel, not the cabinet. A lock with no window.

"Open it where I can see the shelf," I said.

"No."

"Then say the name of the room."

"It doesn't have a name you can file.