“By giving you to me, he hoped to distract us with a personal dispute.”

“Or to frame you if the truth ever came out,” Declan grunted from the doorway.

I looked down at the open ledger, the numbers blurring slightly under the harsh light of the lamp.

I was a pawn in a game that had started long before my father ever signed that first contract.

Victor stepped closer to the table, looking down at me with an expression that looked almost like pity.

“This city is about to become very dangerous for you, Maeve,” Victor said softly.

“More dangerous than it already is,” I replied.

“The people who did this will realize we have the book,” Victor said.

“They will come to silence whoever holds it.”

The wind whistled through the broken window, shaking the plastic sheeting Declan had taped over the glass.

Outside, the neon lights of Calder City bled through the cracks, casting red and blue streaks across the floor.

Victor adjusted his silver cuffs.

“I have a safehouse in upstate New York,” Victor said.

“A quiet place, far from the docks and the smoke.”