"You really think no one can open this?"

The apartment was nicer than anywhere Elena had ever lived.

She didn't say that out loud.

She set Sofie down on the large sofa, tucked a cushion beside her so she wouldn't roll, and stood in the middle of the living room trying to feel less like a guest who had wandered into the wrong building.

A woman named Claire had brought them down.

Efficient, polite, no expression.

She had set a bag of clothes on the kitchen counter — Elena's size, Sofie's size — and said, "Mr.

Carter's assistant sourced these.

There's food in the refrigerator.

The door locks from the inside."

Then she had left.

Elena locked it immediately.

She stood at the window.

The city spread out below, smaller than it looked from the penthouse, but still enormous.

Still indifferent.

Her phone had four missed calls.

All from the same number — her building supervisor, wondering why she hadn't finished the evening shift.

She put the phone face-down on the counter.

Sofie woke up an hour later, sat up, and looked around the apartment with the calm curiosity she brought to everything.

"Are we staying here?"

"For tonight."

"It smells different."

"It's a different place."

Sofie considered this.

"The man was scared."

Elena turned.

"What man?"

"The tall man.

With the cold smile." Sofie picked at the edge of the cushion.

"He wasn't smiling at the end.

He was scared."

"How do you know that?"

"His hands." Sofie looked up.

"Uncle Marcus said scared people always do something with their hands.

They don't know they're doing it."

Elena sat down beside her daughter.

"Sofie.

What else did Uncle Marcus teach you?"

Sofie thought about it with the same careful patience she had shown at the vault.

"He taught me how to find the parts of things that don't match.

He said everything that's hiding something has a place where it doesn't match.

You just have to be quiet and look." She paused.

"He taught me numbers.

Long ones.

He said I had to remember them even when I got big."

"What numbers?"

Sofie recited them without hesitation.

Fourteen digits.

Steady and clear, the way a child recites something practiced so many times it has become part of the furniture of her mind.

Elena stared at her.

"He made me say them every night," Sofie said simply.

"Like a song."

Elena's hands were not steady.

She picked up her phone and typed the number into her notes app, letter by letter, making sure she had it exactly right.

"Did he tell you what the numbers were for?"

"He said they were for the day someone needed them." Sofie looked at her mother.

"Is today that day?"

A knock at the door.

Elena stood up fast.

"Who is it?"

"Richard Blake." A pause.

"I'm alone.

I need two minutes."

Elena looked at Sofie.

Sofie looked at the door.

"He wasn't scared upstairs," Sofie said quietly.

"He was angry."

Elena opened the door on the chain.

Richard Blake looked different without the other men around him.

Older.

The scoffing confidence from the penthouse was gone.

He stood in the hallway with his jacket open and his hands visible, which Elena suspected was deliberate.

"I need to talk to you without Alexander knowing," he said.

"Can I come in?"

"No."

"Fair enough." He glanced down the hallway.

"I knew Marcus Venn.

Not well.

But I knew him.

And I know what Alexander did when Marcus started asking questions about the Harlow accounts."

Elena's grip on the door tightened.

"What accounts?"

"The ones that don't exist on paper.

The ones Marcus found." Richard's voice dropped further.

"He came to me two weeks before the accident.

He said he had documentation.

He said he had put it somewhere safe, somewhere Alexander would never think to look, and that if anything happened to him, the right person would find it eventually."

He looked past Elena, toward Sofie on the sofa.

His expression changed.

"He meant her," Richard said.

"He actually meant her."

"Why are you telling me this?"

Richard looked back at Elena.

"Because I didn't help him when he asked me to.

And he d*ed two weeks later." He paused.

"And I have been the second most powerful man in that company for six years, watching Alexander use those accounts, and I have never done a single thing about it."

He reached into his jacket pocket and held out a card.

Plain white.

A phone number handwritten on the back.

"That's my personal cell.

Not the company line." He held it through the gap.

"If you decide to open that panel, call me first.

Before you call anyone else.

Before you even tell Alexander what's inside."

Elena didn't take the card.

"Why should I trust you?"

Richard didn't answer immediately.

He looked down at the card in his hand.