Chapter 4 - THE TAPE
Dragan killed the basement light.
Darkness swallowed the church storage room.
Nadia heard Mila inhale sharply beside her.
The priest whispered something in Serbian and moved toward the stone wall.
Above them, footsteps crossed the church floor.
Slow.
Measured.
Not the uncertain steps of a parishioner who had wandered into the wrong part of the building.
Someone who knew exactly where they were going.
Dragan pressed the cassette into Nadia’s hand.
“Inside your coat.”
She obeyed.
Theodore stood near the metal storage cage, breathing quietly.
Nadia could not see his face, but she could feel the change in him.
Until tonight, the fire had been history.
A terrible event connected to an investment his father once regretted.
Now a dead woman’s handwriting had named Daniel Merrill directly.
Clarissa’s father.
The man who was supposed to become Theodore’s father-in-law in less than two months.
The basement door opened.
A rectangle of weak church light appeared at the top of the stairs.
Someone descended.
Dragan’s bodyguard moved without sound toward the bottom step.
Nadia’s pulse beat hard enough to hurt.
The figure reached the last stair.
Dragan switched on his flashlight.
The beam hit Oswald’s face.
The old butler lifted both hands.
“Before anyone shoots me,” he said dryly, “I should like to point out that I am seventy next spring.”
Theodore exhaled.
“Oswald, what are you doing here?”
“Preventing you from making a predictable mistake.”
“What mistake?”
“Believing the threat is outside the house.”
Oswald stepped down and closed the basement door behind him.
He was carrying a brown envelope.
“I checked the estate camera logs after you left.”
Dragan turned the light back on.
Oswald removed several printed photographs.
“Clarissa did not leave the hotel tonight.”
Nadia frowned.
“Then who tried to get into my apartment?”
“I don’t know. But twenty-three minutes after you departed Hawthorne House, someone accessed Mr. Hawthorne’s archive room using an employee code.”
Theodore’s face hardened.
“Whose?”
Oswald handed him a page.
Theodore read it.
Then looked up.
“Yours.”
Oswald nodded.
“My code was copied.”
Dragan’s expression became colder.
“Meaning whoever is helping Clarissa has been inside the house long enough to know security procedure.”
Nadia looked toward the boxes containing her mother’s coat.
“Then they may know we came here.”
“Yes,” Dragan said.
The church suddenly felt exposed.
Theodore held up the cassette.
“We need to hear this somewhere secure.”
The priest cleared his throat.
“There is an old player in the office upstairs.”
Dragan shook his head.
“No electronics connected to a public building.”
“It is a cassette machine from 1989.”
For the first time that evening, Theodore almost smiled.
“Then perhaps it is the safest technology in Chicago.”
They moved to the priest’s office.
The machine sat beneath a shelf of hymn books.
Nadia placed the cassette inside.
Her hands trembled.
Mila stood beside her, one palm against Nadia’s back.
The priest pressed PLAY.
Static filled the room.
Then a woman’s voice.
Nadia stopped breathing.
She had almost forgotten the exact sound.
Memory preserved feelings more faithfully than voices.
She remembered her mother’s laugh, but not its pitch.
Remembered the way she whispered prayers while sewing, but not the rhythm.
Now Vesna Voskin spoke from a machine built before Nadia was born.
“If this is being heard, it means I was right to be afraid.”
Mila made a broken sound.
Nadia covered her mouth.
The tape continued.
“My name is Vesna Voskin. I work second shift at Veles Garment. I have reported the chained doors three times. Supervisor says the chain prevents theft. He says workers leave too often. Two inspectors came. Both times the chains were removed before they entered and put back after.”
A pause.
Paper moved near the microphone.
“I copied the shift book. Some names are false. Some workers are paid under different company names. Merrill Holdings knows because the payroll office sends everything upstairs.”
Theodore closed his eyes.
Then Vesna said a name.
“Vincent Hawthorne tried to speak with me. They stopped him. He sent a man named Oswald with a note.”
Everyone looked at the old butler.
Oswald’s eyes had filled.
The tape continued.
“Mr. Hawthorne says he will go to the state. I told him he should hurry.”
Static.
Then Vesna’s voice lowered.
“Daniel Merrill came to the workshop yesterday.”
Nadia’s fingers dug into the edge of the desk.
“He shouted at the manager in the office. I heard him say there could be no inspection before the insurance renewal. He said if the building was closed, everybody would lose money.”
Theodore looked sick.
A second voice appeared faintly in the background of the recording.
Male.
Distant.
Vesna whispered.
“He is here again.”
Then louder:
“If something happens, this is not an accident.”
The tape clicked off.
Nobody spoke.
Mila sat down abruptly.
Nadia remained standing because sitting felt impossible.
Her mother had known.
She had gone to work knowing powerful men were frightened of what she knew.
And she had still gone.
Not because she was foolish.
Because poor women who missed shifts lost rent money, food money, medicine money.
Because danger did not erase necessity.
Nadia understood that better than anyone.
Theodore stared at the silent cassette player.
“My father tried to stop it.”
Oswald nodded.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because after the fire, your father received threats.”
“What kind?”
“Your mother was followed. Your school was photographed. A dead dog was left at the estate gate.”
Theodore’s face changed.
Nadia looked at Oswald.
“And Vincent stopped?”
“No.”
Oswald’s voice trembled for the first time.
“He went to prosecutors privately. But Daniel Merrill’s lawyers produced inspection records showing every exit had been compliant.”
“The records were false,” Dragan said.
“Yes.”
“What happened to Vincent’s evidence?”
Oswald looked toward Theodore.
“Some disappeared after his death.”
Theodore stood.
“My father died of a heart attack.”
“I know.”
“You’re not suggesting—”
“I am suggesting only that, for years, documents vanished whenever they became inconvenient to the Merrill family.”
Theodore looked away.
His engagement was no longer a private romance breaking apart.
It had become an extension of an old war he never knew existed.
Dragan took the shift ledger copy.
“This is enough to reopen questions, not enough to prove murder or arson.”
Nadia turned on him.
“My mother said it wasn’t an accident.”
“I heard her.”
“You sound like a lawyer.”
“No. I sound like a man who wants the truth to survive contact with people paid to destroy it.”
That stopped her.
He held her gaze.
“If you accuse Daniel Merrill before we know what he did, he will bury the evidence again.”
Nadia’s voice shook.
“So we do nothing?”
“We do the opposite.”
Dragan looked at Theodore.
“We let Clarissa believe the tape is still missing.”
Theodore understood immediately.
“You want her to keep searching.”
“Yes.”
“And expose whoever is helping her.”
“Yes.”
Nadia shook her head.
“You want me to go back into that house and pretend I know nothing.”
“No.” Dragan’s expression hardened. “I want you away from the house.”
“Then Clarissa wins.”
“This is not about winning.”
“It is to me.”
Dragan took one step closer.
“Nadia.”
“No.”
Her voice surprised everyone, including herself.
“For ten years, I lived with a story that said my mother died because a factory was old and someone forgot safety rules. Tonight I heard her say someone knew.”
She pointed toward the cassette.
“Clarissa has spent months trying to make me leave the only house connected to the people who kept those records. Now you want me to disappear exactly when she wants me gone?”
Dragan’s jaw tightened.
“I want you alive.”
The words landed differently than everything else.
Nadia looked at him.
No one had ever said that to her as an argument.
Not “safe.”
Not “careful.”
Alive.
Mila touched Nadia’s elbow.
Then signed, “He is right.”
Nadia stared at her sister.
“You too?”
Mila nodded.
“Mom was brave. She also died.”
The cruelty of the truth took Nadia’s anger out of her.
Theodore spoke quietly.
“You and Mila can stay at a property Dragan controls. No staff connected to the Hawthorne estate.”
Nadia looked toward the church window.
Rain streaked the glass.
“What about work?”
“You will be paid.”
“I don’t want charity.”
“It is not charity. You were assaulted in my house by the woman I brought into it.”
Theodore’s voice broke slightly.
“Allow me one decent decision tonight.”
Nadia looked at him.
Then nodded.
The safe property was a townhouse near the lake, owned through one of Dragan’s companies.
It had two bedrooms, reinforced windows, and a doorman who looked like he had once broken furniture for a living.
Mila fell asleep near three in the morning.
Nadia could not.
She sat by the kitchen window with the cassette on the table.
Dragan entered from the hall after speaking with his men.
“You should sleep.”
“So should you.”
“I rarely take advice from people who ignore mine.”
Nadia looked at the tape.
“My mother sounded younger than I remember.”
“She probably was.”
“Thirty-nine.”
Dragan said nothing.
Nadia rubbed the scar on her wrist.
“I used to be angry with her for going to work that day.”
His eyes shifted to her.
“I was seventeen. I begged her to stay home because she had been scared all week.”
“What did she say?”
“That rent did not care about fear.”
Dragan’s mouth tightened.
Nadia looked at him.
“You understand that?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
For a moment she thought he would refuse.
Then he pulled out the chair opposite her.
“My mother cleaned hotel rooms.”
Nadia blinked.
“Your mother?”
“She came to this country with two suitcases and a husband who gambled away one of them.”
There was no humor in his voice.
“I learned early that rich people leave doors open around workers because they assume workers are furniture.”
Nadia thought of Clarissa speaking freely in hallways.
“What happened to her?”
“Cancer. Years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
Dragan nodded once.
Then his phone vibrated.
He looked at the screen.
Everything in his face changed.
“What?” Nadia asked.
He turned the phone toward her.
A photograph had been sent from an unknown number.
It showed the Hawthorne greenhouse.
Empty now.
May you like
On the tile where Nadia’s hair had fallen, someone had arranged black ash into four words.
YOU SHOULD HAVE BURNED TOO.
