The diatribe ended with the thud of something—his cell phone, probably—hitting the desk. The scratch of vinyl came next. Amelia’s father was a sensible man—stoic and wise—but predictable. After troublesome days, he vanquished his vexations withThe Dark Side of the Moon.
Amelia slumped against the doorframe. It’d been a month since their fight, a month of existing like strangers. The bass line of “Money” thumped louder than usual. A clarion call for compassion, it thrashed on her heart. Someone had to budge first. As always, that someone would be her.
Down the hall, Amelia hesitated at the threshold of his office wheredust motes glittered in the golden hour. With his back to her, her father stared out the window at a thicket of trees. Their lush canopies swayed in splendid unison against a violently blue sky.
For late June, Portland was downright balmy. The sultry novelty wore off a week ago, and the city sweltered beneath a dome of unrelenting heat. Cool reprieve had rolled in today on cotton puff clouds.
“You don’t have to knock, Amelia,” her father said before her knuckles met the door.
With a glance over his shoulder, he frowned at her dress hitting mid-thigh. Fatherly disapproval came wrapped in cellophane she saw right through. He knew better than to say anything, though, so they did their little dance. He smiled stiffly. She tried at levity.
“Nothing says ‘I’m here to party’ like a vintage sweatshirt, Dad.”
He shrugged at the halfhearted joke and spared just as little humor. “Nostalgia dies hard, I guess.”
His Harvard Law sweatshirt had gone threadbare years ago, and the ink faded years before that. He wore it in stark contrast to his dark hair, combed and side parted, and a salt-and-pepper beard trimmed neat against his chin.
Amelia motioned to his phone unscathed from its tumble. “Everything okay?”
The coffee mug at his lips obscured a scowl, but his steely gaze said the rest. No, absolutely not.
His friendship with Richard Dauer was in shambles. They’d met in law school, but Rich’s charisma led him down a path as the city’s most prominent defense attorney. “A high society man,” her father called Rich, all too pleased to pin the moniker to his old friend. What started as an innocent jab had sharpened with time and could cut to the bone with bitterness.
“It’s fine,” he said but contemplated his desk. “I need to work anyway.”
Amelia eyed the tatty folders and chicken scratch notes, mostbearing the Moriarty name. Then there was her father. His hair greyed at an alarming rate and dark circles permanently rested beneath his eyes. The case would be the death of him, and their fight just seemed petty.
Amelia almost said as much, but a photograph slotted in the keyboard caught her attention. In it, an older man flashed a candid smile on the razor edge of laughter. It was a bizarre memento amongst court filings and affidavits.
“Who is that?” she asked.
Her father took another swig from his mug and set it down hard. Coffee splattered a nearby folder.
“Liam Moriarty.”
“He’s the one you’re after?”
“Not quite. He ran the organization for decades but stepped down. I’m after the man who took his place.”
With a knot in her belly, Amelia came closer to his desk. The question on her lips didn’t need asking, and it wasn’t her place to pry.
“Who took his place?” she asked despite herself.
“A man named Emory Holt.”
Her father spit out the hard “T” like venom, so at odds with the sweetness she’d put on the name. Amelia saw it coming but still nearly lost the floor. She swallowed hard and scrambled for some composure.
“That’s his son?”
“Not by blood, but important enough that he inherited the empire. Emory Holt is something else. Calculated, deliberate, secretive.”
“Would Burt have known him?”
Quiet frenzy tinged Amelia’s question as the pieces abruptly came together. The folder wasn’t bits and bobs of random information, but a dossier on Emory, a man exalted in the criminal underworld. Shame shaded her fascination of him, those nights she found her way back to that folder, back to him.
Her father circled his desk and sat at the edge. The prosecutor’s pose, he did it when he needed to coax out thetruth. Maybe he thought it disarmed or tempered his severity. It didn’t.
“I don’t think so. Why? Did he say something to you about Emory or the Moriartys?”
