Chapter 1 - THE COIN AROUND HER NECK
A three-year-old girl walked into my birthday dinner carrying a white flower.
Before the night was over, I would question a death I had accepted for twenty years, a child I had mourned for four, and the man who had stood closest to me through both.
But none of that was obvious when she first entered the room.
She only wanted to know why my cake had no candles.
Thirty people sat around the dining table inside my family’s Beacon Hill mansion.
A priest.
A judge.
Businessmen.
Union men.
Others whose occupations were easier not to name.
Some had killed people.
Some had paid other men to do it.
All of them knew better than to mention the white cake sitting in front of me.
There had been no candles in my house for three years.
Not since my younger brother Leo was murdered outside a restaurant near Fenway.
Leo loved birthdays.
Every year he lit one candle even after we became adults and said the same ridiculous thing.
“As long as somebody’s left to blow it out, we still count as a family.”
After I buried him, I stopped lighting them.
Nobody argued.
My name is Damon Riley.
I turned thirty-seven that night.
Around Boston, people used other names for me.
Most of them were not spoken near my face.
I had inherited businesses from men who called extortion consulting and violence enforcement.
I had spent years making some of those businesses legal.
Others were harder to separate from the blood beneath them.
I was raising a glass when the little girl appeared from the kitchen corridor.
Three years old.
Maybe slightly younger.
Long blonde curls.
Peach dress.
Flour on one cheek.
She carried a white flower by the stem.
One of my guards stepped toward her.
Then stopped when he saw who followed several yards behind.
Emily Dawson.
One of the household staff.
Thirty-one.
Quiet.
Good at disappearing into rooms before anyone noticed they needed something.
Four years earlier, Emily and I had known each other differently.
Nobody at the table knew that.
At least I believed nobody did.
The little girl walked past twenty men who frightened grown adults.
Stopped beside me.
Placed the flower next to my cake.
Then asked:
“Why aren't you blowing out the candles?”
Nobody breathed normally after that.
I looked at the cake.
“There aren't any.”
She considered this.
“We can get some.”
Something inside my chest moved.
Leo would have liked her.
That irritated me.
I almost smiled.
Then she leaned closer.
A silver object slipped from beneath the lace collar of her dress.
My body went cold before my mind understood why.
Coin.
Silver.
Old.
A wolf beneath a full moon.
Leather cord.
Worn center.
Then she moved and chandelier light touched the lower edge.
A notch beneath the wolf’s jaw.
Small.
Diagonal.
Deliberate.
My glass stopped halfway to the table.
Twenty years earlier, I had watched my father rub his thumb across that same notch.
At least I thought it was the same one.
The Riley wolf coin was older than anyone living in that room.
Family story said one of my ancestors carried it at Gettysburg.
My grandfather had it.
Then my father.
Then, twenty years earlier, it disappeared on the same night he did.
No body.
No coin.
Eventually the family stopped using the word missing.
We used dead.
I stared at the child's necklace.
She noticed.
“You like it?”
My voice sounded wrong.
“Where did you get that?”
She touched the coin.
“Mommy.”
Across the ballroom, a serving tray struck the floor.
Crystal broke.
Emily stood near the kitchen entrance.
Her face had gone white.
Not embarrassed.
Not surprised.
Terrified.
I rose.
The entire table responded.
Chairs shifted.
Hands moved beneath jackets.
“Sit down.”
Nobody argued.
Emily crossed the room quickly.
“Lily.”
So that was the child's name.
Emily reached for her.
I stepped between them.
Not touching either one.
“Where did she get the coin?”
Emily looked at me.
Then toward the men around the table.
“Not here.”
That answer changed the room.
Marcus Bell stood near the far end.
My closest lieutenant for sixteen years.
The man who helped me bury Leo.
For one second, his eyes left Emily.
They went to the coin.
And Marcus Bell—who had watched men die without changing expression—looked afraid.
I saw it.
So did Emily.
Then Lily tugged my sleeve.
I looked down.
She studied my face with serious gray eyes.
Gray.
Almost silver in the chandelier light.
My eyes.
Leo’s eyes.
My father's eyes.
Coincidence.
Children inherit colors from strangers every day.
I told myself that once.
Then twice.
Emily pulled Lily behind her.
“Please.”
Her voice had dropped to a whisper.
“Let me take her upstairs.”
“Answer me first.”
“Damon.”
Four years earlier, Emily had said my name exactly that way from a hospital bed.
The memory arrived before I could stop it.
Her pregnancy.
The call.
The sentence that ended everything.
The baby didn't make it.
I looked at Lily.
Three years old.
Maybe closer to four.
Then back at Emily.
She knew what calculation had just happened inside my head.
Her eyes filled.
“Don't do this here.”
I barely heard her.
Because behind Emily, Marcus Bell was already leaving the room.
May you like
Without asking permission.
And that bothered me even more than the coin.
