Chapter 11 - The Terrace Warning
Seven o’clock arrived beneath a Manhattan sunset the color of copper and rose.
Tessa stepped onto The Marlowe Room’s private rooftop terrace expecting Roman, two glasses of wine, and perhaps the first evening in months when neither of them needed to discuss federal indictments, shipping manifests, or men who wanted them dead.
Instead, she found Roman standing beside the stone railing with an envelope in his hand.
His expression told her everything.
“Please tell me that’s the dinner menu,” she said.
Roman looked at the envelope. “I would, but Patrick doesn’t usually print menus on fourteen-year-old union stationery.”
The warmth left her chest.
Tessa crossed the terrace.
The paper was yellowed, creased twice, and stamped with the faded seal of Boston Harbor Local 118—the union her father had led before his death.
Across the front, written in block letters, were three words.
FOR TESSA CALLAHAN.
Her fingers went cold.
“Who delivered it?”
“No one saw,” Roman said. “It was inside the locked reservation ledger in Patrick’s office.”
“That office has cameras.”
“They lost eleven minutes.”
Tessa stared at him.
Roman’s jaw tightened. “Exactly.”
She opened the envelope.
Inside was a photocopy of a handwritten shipping ledger dated three weeks before Sean Callahan’s murder.
Most of the names meant nothing anymore.
One did.
VICTOR BELLAMY.
Roman’s father.
Tessa stopped breathing.
Roman looked toward Central Park rather than at her.
“You knew,” she whispered.
“I knew my father had business with Boston unions. I did not know Sean Callahan was one of his contacts.”
“Contacts?”
Her voice sharpened.
“My father died because he refused Murphy’s forged manifests, Roman. Now his notebook says your father met him three weeks before the fire.”
“I can see the date.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Roman finally looked at her.
For the first time since the night she had slipped him the twelve-word receipt, he seemed uncertain.
“My father was not a good man.”
Tessa laughed once, without humor.
“That’s a very elegant sentence.”
“It’s also the truth.”
Before Roman could continue, something fell from the envelope and landed near Tessa’s shoe.
A small brass key.
A paper tag was tied around it.
LOCKER 317. SOUTH STATION.
Beneath that was another message.
MURPHY TOOK THE BLAME. ASK WHO PAID HIM.
Tessa read it twice.
Then a third time.
Roman reached for the paper, but she pulled it back.
“Don’t.”
His hand stopped.
She looked at him, hurt moving beneath her anger.
“You told me Murphy killed my father.”
“He did.”
“That note says somebody paid him.”
“It could be bait.”
“It could also be the truth.”
Roman’s phone vibrated.
He checked the screen.
Dante.
Roman answered immediately.
“What?”
Tessa watched his expression change.
Not fear.
Calculation.
“When?” Roman asked.
A pause.
“Lock every exit. Nobody leaves.”
He ended the call.
“What happened?”
Roman slowly slipped the phone into his pocket.
“The security technician who serviced Patrick’s cameras this morning used fake identification.”
Tessa felt her heartbeat climb.
“Who hired him?”
“That’s the problem.”
Roman stepped closer.
“The work order was authorized internally.”
“By who?”
Roman’s eyes hardened.
“My executive office.”
Tessa stared at him.
Only a handful of people could authorize security work under Roman’s name.
Dante.
Roman’s attorney.
His operations director.
And Elias Ward, Bellamy Holdings’ chief financial officer for almost eleven years.
Tessa had met Elias twice.
Gray-haired. Polished. Soft-spoken.
The sort of man who remembered everyone’s birthday and never raised his voice.
The sort of man nobody noticed until money disappeared.
“Someone inside your company put that envelope there,” she said.
Roman nodded.
“And whoever did it knew I’d be here tonight.”
A cold breeze moved across the terrace.
Below them, Manhattan continued as if nothing had changed.
Cabs honked.
People laughed.
Lights appeared in windows.
Tessa closed her fingers around the brass key.
Three months ago, she would have run.
She would have packed one bag, changed apartments, changed jobs, perhaps changed her name again.
That woman was gone.
“My train leaves for Boston at six tomorrow morning.”
Roman’s eyebrows lifted.
“You’re not going alone.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You also didn’t ask me before charging onto Pier Four with a pistol.”
“That worked out.”
“Debatable.”
For half a second, something almost like a smile passed between them.
Then Roman became serious.
“Tessa, if Victor Bellamy had anything to do with your father’s death, I won’t hide it from you.”
She searched his face.
“Even if it destroys what’s left of your family name?”
Roman stepped closer until barely a foot separated them.
“A name isn’t worth protecting if the truth underneath it is rotten.”
The answer softened something inside her, but not enough.
Not yet.
She slipped the key into her purse.
“Then tomorrow we find out what your father bought in Boston.”
Roman glanced toward the untouched dinner table.
“So much for the terrace.”
Tessa picked up one of the wineglasses.
“To unfinished business.”
Roman lifted the other.
Their glasses touched.
Neither drank.
Because across the street, behind the dark window of an empty apartment, a camera lens quietly disappeared from view.
May you like
Someone had been watching the entire conversation.
And whoever it was already knew they were going to Boston.
