Prologue
Dark suits. Black umbrellas. Pouring down rain. Black shoes caked in mud walk up, place a flower on the coffin, and then move away. My own shoes seem glued to the ground, unable to take that step.
This is it.
This is the day it all begins.
I have always been the underling, never trained for what is to come. My brother should be standing beside me, prepared to run the family, not lying in a coffin. Without Micha, the entire enterprise falls to me.
The family is waiting for me to take the reins, be the man, bring the business back to its former glory, solve the mystery, and continue the family line. They’ll expect me to maintain our profitability, keep the feds away, find Micha’s murderer, and pick out some unfortunate soul to join me in unholy matrimony.
There is no way I can do this alone.
“Don’t worry, son.” My father’s hand on my shoulder is uncharacteristically gentle. “I’ll always be here to guide you.”
Chapter 1—Newbie
I haul a cardboard box labeled “KITCHEN UTENSILS” up the flight of stairs, gripping it tightly against my body so it doesn’t fall when I fish out my keys. It takes some maneuvering, but I finally get the key into the lock and enter my brand-new apartment. New to me, anyway.
The apartment is spacious enough, especially for one person. The door opens to a living room partially filled with boxes of household items and trash bags of clothing. The living room opens into an eat-in kitchen, and I take the last box there. A quick trip back to the car for my hanging pothos plant, and my move-in is complete.
I stand in between the kitchen and the living room for a moment, examining my new surroundings and wondering where to start. I’d like to sit down, but the couch and chair that come with the apartment—a huge bonus when I selected the place—look uninviting to me. They’re not mine, and I feel like I should ask someone if it’s all right to sit there, but there is no one to ask.
“Do you mind if I sit, Vee?” I ask the plant.
The pothos doesn’t respond.
“I’ll take that as a no.” I drop down onto the couch, run my hand over the wooden armrest, get a splinter, and quickly jump up again. “Maybe that wasn’t a no!”
I spend the next hour looking through boxes until I find tweezers to get the splinter out of my finger. I wonder if I’m supposed to call a maintenance person to sand down the couch arms and decide it would be better to just do it myself. Working in Aunt Ginny’s antique shop, I’d refinished a lot of furniture and would likely do a better job than a maintenance guy anyway.
Aunt Ginny.
After spending the last twenty-two years looking after me, her only niece, my Aunt Ginny passed away four months ago, leaving me alone in the world. I wanted to keep her antique shop open after she passed but ultimately had to close the doors to the small building that held way too many memories.
I swallow hard and fight back tears as I reach over and stroke one of Vee’s leaves.
I can still see Aunt Ginny’s smiling, rosy-cheeked face as she woke me up for school or for weekend work at the shop. I remember her hand in mine as we walked to the library on Wednesdays to pick out new books to read, and I remember the smell of her perfume when she hugged me close. I remember the week after my twenty-second birthday when Sheriff Hardy came to the diner where I worked second shift to tell me my aunt was gone. She had been moving an early colonial trunk from one side of the store to the other when she had a massive stroke. There was nothing anyone could have done.
I glance at the sturdy envelope full of papers I had found in the back office of the shop—the papers that brought me here—and then quickly look away. I’m not ready to dive into that just yet.