Chapter 2 - The Weight of an Open Hand
The private gym beneath the east wing of Casco Ridge smelled of polished cedar, oiled leather, and the faint, mineral bite of sea salt drifting through reinforced basement vents.
Declan Prescott stood on the canvas mat in oversized gray sweatpants and a faded black T-shirt that had belonged to his father. His fists were raised, his elbows flared out like wings, his chin jutting forward in an instinctive posture of schoolyard defiance.
Roger Albani didn’t move. He stood three feet away, barefoot on the mat, wearing black training trousers and a plain athletic shirt that clung to broad, slab-like shoulders. The dark ink trailing down his forearms caught the fluorescent overhead light: geometric lines, old maritime tallies, and names written in a script Declan was too young to decipher.
"Your elbows are out," Roger said evenly. "Which means your ribs belong to whoever is standing in front of you."
Declan didn't lower his arms. "I can take a hit."
"Taking a hit isn't a strategy. It's an apology for being slow." Roger stepped forward, his bare foot making no sound against the mat. With terrifying speed, his left palm flicked out. He didn’t strike; he simply brushed Declan’s right elbow inward, tapping the boy's exposed ribs with two fingers. "Drop your center. Tuck your chin. You’re not trying to look tall. You’re trying to survive."
Declan swallowed hard, adjusting his stance. The boy’s jaw remained tight, vibrating with the defensive anger that had kept him awake every night since his father had died in an icy crosswalk in South Portland two years ago.
"Why do you care?" Declan asked, his voice cracking slightly before settling into a teenage rasp. "You don't know us. My mom thinks you're just being eccentric. But guys like you don't hire a lady with five kids because you like noise."
Roger didn't blink. He circled Declan slowly, his pale eyes tracking the boy's weight distribution. "Your mother manages three hundred acres, twenty-four domestic staff, eight security checkpoints, and two million dollars in operational payroll every quarter. She does it without trembling, and she did it while living out of a station wagon for four days. That isn't charity, Declan. That's competence."
"And the rest of us?"
"The rest of you," Roger murmured, stopping directly in front of him, "are her reason for waking up. Which makes you valuable assets."
"Assets," Declan muttered, tasting the cold word.
"In my world, an asset is something you bleed for," Roger said quietly. "Now, reset your feet. Show me a jab."
Up on the mezzanine railing, partially obscured by the shadow of the brick archway, Fiona stood motionless. Her hand gripped the cold iron rail until her knuckles turned ivory. She had come looking for Declan after finding his bed empty at ten o'clock at night. She had expected to find him brooding in the garden or staring out at the rocky surf.
She had not expected to find Roger Albani patiently demonstrating how to pivot on the ball of the back foot.
Fiona watched the contrast between them: her eldest son, gangly and brittle with grief, and the man who ruled Cumberland County’s waterfront with an iron fist. There was no cruelty in Roger’s corrections. When Declan stumbled, Roger’s hand caught the boy’s shoulder before he hit the canvas, steadying him with the unhurried strength of a granite pillar.
*He’s dangerous,* Fiona reminded herself, her chest tightening. *The rumors aren’t accidents. Men don't run shipping empires out of coastal Maine without stepping on throats.*
Yet, when Declan finally landed a clean, snapping jab into Roger’s leather focus mitt, producing a loud *crack* that echoed off the high rafters, Roger didn't scoff.
He nodded once. "Better. Again."
Declan wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his wrist, and for the first time in twenty-four months, Fiona saw the ghost of a proud smile touch her son's mouth.
Quietly, so the heel of her shoe wouldn't betray her presence on the stairs, Fiona turned and slipped back into the dim corridors of the mansion.
Her quarters in the east family wing were larger than the entire split-level house she had once shared with Thomas. The children’s bedrooms radiated outward from a central sitting room warmed by a soapstone hearth. Inside Minnie’s room, a tiny nightlight cast sea-turtle silhouettes across the ceiling. Minnie was sprawled sideways across a four-poster bed that could have slept four of her, clutching her plastic bag of wilted dandelions like buried treasure.
In the next room, Jonah and Peter shared twin beds. Jonah was asleep with an architectural digest tented over his chest, his glasses crooked on his nose. Peter was curled tightly in the center of his mattress, his breathing rhythmic, clutching the soft corner of Roger's cashmere coat—which the boy had secretly carried upstairs despite claiming he had returned it to the wardrobe.
Fiona walked into her own room, closed the heavy walnut door, and leaned her forehead against the wood.
Her body throbbed with exhaustion. For months, she had lived in a perpetual state of fight-or-flight, rationing groceries, dodging landlord calls, and hiding the truth of their bankruptcy behind cheerful smiles and games of "indoor camping."
Now, they had clean linen. They had a pantry stocked with fresh fruit, milk that didn't expire tomorrow, and heat that roared through the radiators without coughing black smoke.
And yet, the silence of the night felt loaded with gunpowder.
Fiona crossed to the antique mahogany vanity where her small, battered leather suitcase lay half-unpacked. Sitting on the lace doily was Thomas’s silver music box.
It was an intricate piece of Swiss craftsmanship, roughly the size of a paperback novel, crafted from heavy sterling silver with relief carvings of sailing schooners battling a stormy sea. Thomas had given it to her on their fifth anniversary. He had told her it was an heirloom from his grandfather’s days in the merchant marine.
*“If anything ever happens to me, Fee,”* Thomas had whispered one night, his breath smelling of the stale coffee he drank while hunched over blueprints at his maritime engineering firm, *“you keep this close. Don’t sell it at a pawn shop. Don’t trade it for rent. You keep it.”*
At the time, she had thought it was poetic sentimentality. Now, running her fingers over the cool silver, she felt the chill of an unanswered question.
Downstairs, the heavy crunch of gravel outside the perimeter gate broke the stillness.
Fiona parted the heavy velvet curtains and looked down into the courtyard. Two hundred yards away, beyond the iron gates that separated Casco Ridge from the coastal highway, the taillights of an unmarked black sedan flared red against the fog before sliding silently into the dark.
At the edge of the driveway stood Malcolm Reeve. The security chief was holding an umbrella, a thermal scanner resting against his hip, his phone pressed to his ear.
He didn't look like a security guard. He looked like a soldier awaiting artillery.
A soft knock sounded at Fiona’s door.
Her heart leaped into her throat. She stepped back from the window, smoothing her cardigan over her clothes. "Yes?"
The door opened an inch. It was Mrs. Higgins, the head housekeeper, holding a silver tray with a pot of chamomile tea and a porcelain cup.
"Mr. Albani thought you might be awake, Mrs. Prescott," the older woman said softly, her face lined with thirty years of service to the Albani family. "He noticed the light under your door from the courtyard."
Fiona swallowed. "He watches the windows?"
"Mr. Albani watches everything," Mrs. Higgins replied with a mild, knowing smile. "It's why the roof never leaks, and the wolves stay outside the fence. Drink your tea, child. Tomorrow the port inspectors arrive, and you'll need your wits."
Fiona took the tray, whispering her thanks. But after the door clicked shut, she didn't drink right away.
May you like
She walked back to the desk, stared at the silver music box, and wondered whether the wolves Mrs. Higgins spoke of were trying to break into Casco Ridge—or if they were already inside.
***
