Chapter 6 - The Long Road North
We left the tenement with two duffel bags, a cardboard box filled with my father’s leatherworking tools, and Eli clutched tightly against my side, his fingers buried in the fabric of my coat.
Eli didn’t say a word as we walked out the front door. His big eyes darted to the dark alleyway where his father had been minutes before, then to the massive black Maybach idling silently at the curb.
A young man in a dark suit—not Leo, but someone younger with sharp features and a quiet demeanor—stepped out and opened the rear door for us.
“Miss Vance. Young man. I’m Sam,” he said respectfully.
Eli looked up at me, hesitating.
“It’s okay, bug,” I whispered, squeezing his hand. “Get in.”
The interior of the car was warm and smelled of leather. Gabriel was sitting in the front passenger seat this time, his laptop open on his knees, the glow from the screen illuminating the stern contours of his face. He didn't turn around immediately, giving Eli and me a private pocket of space in the back.
As Sam pulled away from the curb, leaving the crumbling streets of Humboldt Park behind, Eli pressed his face against the cool tinted glass.
“Mom?” he whispered.
“Yes, honey?”
“Are we ever going back there?”
I looked at the cardboard box sitting between my feet. It contained my father’s bone folders, his brass finishing wheels, his paring knives, and three worn photograph albums. Everything else we owned in that apartment—the sagging mattress, the chipped plates, the peeling linoleum—was just debris.
“No, Eli,” I said, and for the first time in three years, I felt a strange, terrifying certainty settle in my chest. “We’re not going back.”
Up front, Gabriel closed his laptop with a quiet click.
He adjusted his rearview mirror until his gray eyes met mine.
“The carriage house has three bedrooms,” Gabriel said, his voice calm, cutting through the hum of the tires on asphalt. “The kitchen is fully stocked. Mrs. Gable, the housekeeper, made beef stew before she retired for the night. It will still be warm on the stove.”
“Mr. Hart,” I said quietly, “I don’t know how to repay ten thousand dollars for Mark’s train ticket.”
“I don’t recall asking you to repay it.”
“I don’t accept charity.”
“It wasn't charity,” Gabriel replied, turning his head slightly so I could see the sharp profile of his jaw. “It was an investment in efficiency. If your ex-husband was in Chicago, you would spend half your time looking over your shoulder instead of focusing on my manuscripts. I need your mind clear, Miss Vance. My grandfather’s ledgers are rotting by the hour.”
Eli leaned forward, his curiosity overcoming his exhaustion. “What kind of ledgers?”
Gabriel paused. He looked at Eli in the mirror.
“Venetian trade records from 1482,” Gabriel said, treating the seven-year-old with the exact same gravity he would show a business associate. “Written on linen rag paper. They recorded shipments of silk, spices, and Damascus steel across the Mediterranean.”
Eli’s eyes went huge. “Did pirates try to steal them?”
A ghost of a smile flickered across Gabriel’s lips. “Frequently. That’s why the merchants wrote the most important cargo in cipher.”
“Can you read cipher?” Eli asked, completely captivated.
May you like
“No,” Gabriel said softly, his eyes shifting back to mine. “That’s why I hired your mother.”
***