Chapter 37 - The Matriarch's Ghost
The moment the lock clicked, Eleanor burst into hysterical, ragged sobs, clawing at the hem of my jeans.
"Sarah, please! Please, you have to save us! He’ll kill us all! You don't know what they do to people who defy the Accord! My father... my father watched his brother disappear into the Danube in '68! That’s why we fled! That’s why I was so hard on you! I had to make sure you were strong enough to survive them!"
"Shut up, Eleanor!" Mark snapped, his eyes blazing with fury. "Don't you dare rewrite your cruelty as motherly love! You called Clara a bastard in front of fifty people! You tried to evict us into the snow on Christmas! You did it because you were a selfish coward!"
"I was terrified!" Eleanor screamed, tears streaking her dirt-caked face. "Every day of my life, I waited for the headlights to come up that mountain! I thought if I controlled the trust, if I had the money, I could buy our freedom! But Julian doesn't want money! He wants the blood registry!"
"Where is the Bible, Eleanor?" I asked, kneeling down, grabbing her by her trembling shoulders and forcing her to look into my eyes. "Look at me. Forget the trust. Forget the family hatred. If you want Clara to see tomorrow morning, where is the Bible?"
Eleanor swallowed hard, her pupils dilated with pure panic. "It isn't in Boston. And it isn't in the safe."
Arthur gasped, leaning forward in his chair. "What do you mean? Henry gave it to you on his deathbed!"
"He gave me an empty case!" Eleanor confessed, her voice dropping to a desperate whisper. "Henry never trusted me! He knew I had inherited the Directorate’s fear! He said the cipher belonged to the one who would rebuild Black Ridge with clean hands! He hid it inside the nursery mantle—behind the carved stone cherub above Clara’s crib!"
My breath hitched in my throat.
The nursery.
The stone cherub had been carved into the marble fireplace in Clara’s room over a century ago. When Mark and I renovated the room for our baby girl, Mark had personally polished that exact carving, noting how strangely reinforced the mortar behind it seemed.
"It’s in Clara’s room," I whispered, horror washing over me.
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"Julian’s men are patrolling the second-floor landing," Mark said, his voice deadly quiet as he looked toward the library windows. "We can't just walk up there and start chipping away at the fireplace. The second they hear us, they’ll breach the door."
"Then we don't chip away at it," Mark said, his carpenter’s mind already calculating angles, weight, and structure. "The dumbwaiter. The old freight shaft runs from behind the library sideboard directly into the nursery closet."
