Sixteen-year-old Toby Gentry races to uncover $4.2 million in stolen underworld assets after his pregnant sister-in-law disappears from a locked Charleston cellar, exposing a deadly family conspira...
One year later, the scent of low tide mud and fried shrimp hung heavy in the air. It was my seventeenth birthday. The damp, chilly dockside diner near the Charleston marshes was almost empty, just a few old fishermen nursing their coffees. I sat by the window, watching the gray light filter through the dense fog that clung to the water.
My family empire, or what was left of it, had indeed been destroyed. Julian was in federal prison, implicated in Garrity’s real estate fraud by documents Bram had anonymously leaked to a federal task force months ago. Evelyn Gentry had retreated into her Broad Street mansion, a recluse haunting a house she no longer truly owned, drowning in unpayable debts.
The police were never involved in the true events. The underworld had handled its own, as Bram had predicted. Silas Pinckney remained a shadowy figure, his exact whereabouts unknown, his empire weakened but still dangerous. He never found Maeve. No one did. She vanished without a trace, taking her $4.2 million fortune with her.
Bram had made good on his word, driving me across state lines and providing enough cash for me to disappear. I found work, kept my head down, and tried to forget the tunnels, the betrayals, and the ghost of Maeve.
The waitress, a woman with kind eyes, approached my table. “Someone left this for you, honey. Just now.”
She placed a plain, unmarked manila envelope on the worn Formica tabletop. My heart hammered.
Inside, there were two items.
The first was a positive pregnancy test. Exactly like the one Maeve had left behind in the cellar. I stared at the two faint pink lines.
The second was a brand-new, intricately carved brass key. It felt heavy in my palm. Attached was a small, blank tag.
No note. No sender. Just the key. A new key, to an unknown locked room beneath the city.
The world was not safe. The threads of the past were not cut. Maeve might be gone, but her shadow, and Silas’s, still stretched long over Charleston. Some doors, once opened, can never truly be closed.
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