Sloane swallowed hard, her throat moving under the high collar of her wool coat.

She looked at Matteo, who stood near the door, his arms crossed tightly over his chest.

Matteo did not look back at her; his eyes remained fixed on the floorboards, cold and unyielding.

“He keeps the primary ledger on a private server,” Sloane said, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper.

“It’s not connected to the main house network because he didn’t trust the external firewalls.”

“It’s hosted on a terminal in the lower level, beneath the old conservatory.”

I felt a cold prickle of recognition at the back of my neck.

“The old archive room,” I said.

“The vault,” Sloane corrected.

“The one your grandfather built during the reconstruction after the war.”

“Harrison installed a digital keypad on the heavy iron door last winter.”

“He thinks no one watched him set the master bypass code, but I saw him entry log it twice.”

Grace leaned forward, her spectacles slipping slightly down her nose.

“What is the code, Sloane?”

Sloane reached for the pen, but Grace pulled the paper back, just out of her reach.