The Mafia Boss Set Cameras to Catch a Thief and Found Me Dancing in His Shirt Instead

Sadie did not lock the door.

She gave him fifteen seconds.

She counted them out in her head—one one-thousand, two one-thousand—her hand pressed against the edge of the mahogany desk, her heart pounding against her ribs like a trapped sledgehammer.

At sixteen, she grabbed the heavy brass paperweight from the blotter, pulled her cardigan tight around her waist, and slipped out into the corridor.

The hallway was freezing.

The air conditioning had kicked on, blowing cold, damp air through the high vents near the ceiling.

She moved down the grand staircase, her bare feet making no sound against the oak treads, her left hand sliding along the cold banister.

The mansion was completely dark now.

The sconces on the ground floor had been shut off from the main panel.

She reached the bottom of the stairs, her breath coming in short, tight gasps. To her left, the long gallery stretched toward the conservatory. To her right, the double doors of the drawing room stood half-open, a thin sliver of pale moonlight cutting through the gap.

She heard a sound.

Not a shout. Not a gun shot.

The dry, brittle sound of wood splintering under high pressure.

Sadie moved toward the gap. She stayed low, her shoulder pressed against the flock wallpaper, her brass paperweight raised near her ear.

Inside the drawing room, the moonlight hit the center of the floor like a spotlight on a stage.

Two men were standing near the Garrard turntable.

One of them was Julian.

He was standing six feet from the record player, his arm extended, the short dark revolver held low and level, pointing straight at the chest of the second man.

The second man was not young.

He was perhaps sixty-five, tall and thin as a birch sapling, wearing an expensive camel-hair coat that looked three sizes too large for his bony shoulders. His hair was white, long at the back, and combed over a scalp covered in liver spots.

He was holding a small silver object in his right hand.

"You always were too smart for your own good, Julian," the old man rasped. His voice sounded like dry leaves being scraped across a driveway. "Just like Arthur. Always looking at the wires instead of the picture."

"Put it down, Vance," Julian said.

Sadie’s chest went cold.

Mr. Vance.

Julian’s private secretary. The man who had managed the estate’s legal accounts for thirty years. The man who sat in the small office near the front gates and wore rimless glasses and brought Julian his morning mail in a brown leather pouch.

Vance let out a thin, wet cough that shook his narrow chest.

"It isn't yours, Julian," Vance said, his voice rising slightly. "None of it was yours! Arthur took four hundred thousand dollars from the South Boston account on the thirteenth. He was going to leave me with the debt! Me! I spent twenty years keeping his books clean while he bought paintings and drank scotch in Revere!"

"My father didn't take the money, Vance," Julian said softly. His revolver didn't shake by a millimeter. "You took it."

Vance smiled. It was a terrible, toothless expression that made his pale eyes look sunken and wet in the moonlight.

"I took what I was owed," Vance snapped. "And Arthur found out. He met me at the diner to tell me he was going to the prosecutor in the morning. He had the ticket in his pocket, Julian! He was going to put me in Walpole for fifteen years!"

"So you shot him," Julian stated.

"I didn't shoot him!" Vance yelled, his voice cracking into a high, pathetic screech. "Doyle shot him! Doyle was working for me then! Doyle took twenty grand to clear the parking lot before the state police arrived!"

In the shadow behind the double doors, Sadie felt her stomach drop into her boots.

Martin Doyle.

She turned her head slowly.

Standing five feet behind her in the dark hallway, his heavy gray tweed jacket damp from the rain, was the chief of security.

He was holding a long, black automatic pistol with a thick suppressor screwed onto the end of the barrel.

"You talk too much, Vance," Doyle grunted softly from the dark.