The Iron Bangle: He Owns The City That Betrayed Him

Chapter 7: The Owner.

The receptionist was still laughing when the screens came back to life.

White letters bloomed across the black glass. They filled the giant directory on the lobby wall, the screens above all six elevators, the monitor on her desk, and the menu board at the coffee kiosk. Every screen in the Whitmore Tower said the same thing at the same moment.

THIS PROPERTY IS HELD BY MILLER ESTATE HOLDINGS.

OWNER: JACE MILLER.

Her laugh stopped in the middle.

Frank the guard stood frozen with one hand still reaching for Jace's arm. He looked up at the screen above the elevators. He looked down at Jace. He lowered his hand slowly to his side, as if someone had cut the string holding it up.

Thirty people stood still in the lobby. Somebody's coffee cup hit the marble and rolled.

"Jace Miller?"

"Isn't that the Whitmore son-in-law?"

"The house-husband. The one who walks their dogs."

"He owns this building?"

Phones came up all over the lobby. Ten minutes ago they would have been filming a joke. Now every lens was pointed at him, and nobody was laughing.

The receptionist stared at her monitor. She looked up at Jace, down at the screen, up at Jace again. Her red glasses slid down her nose, and she did not push them back.

"I... sir, I didn't..." Her voice came out thin and high. "I didn't know. Nobody told me. If I had known..."

"You'd have been kind?" Jace asked quietly.

She opened her mouth, and nothing came out.

On his wrist, the blue numbers had changed.

364 DAYS. PROPERTIES CLAIMED: 1 / 214.

Jace took his hand off the scanner. Heat climbed up through him from the soles of his feet. It straightened his back one bone at a time until he was standing taller than he had ever stood in this building. He turned around slowly.

The elevator behind him had opened.

Evelyn stood in it, with Clara, and Cael. Behind them came Judge Kane on his silver cane, and the two lawyers in dark suits.

Evelyn read the giant screen on the wall. Above it, carved deep into the marble, was her own name: THE WHITMORE TOWER. She read the screen to the end. Then she closed her eyes.

Clara pressed one hand flat over her mouth.

Kane was not looking at the screen. He was looking at the small blue numbers on Jace's wrist, 1 / 214, and his lips moved silently, as if he were counting something.

Cael lifted his phone and took a picture of the screen. He lowered it and looked at Jace, and smiled, slow and satisfied, like a man watching his horse cross the finish line.

Grace Shaw had her tablet open. She scrolled, stopped, and stepped up beside Jace. Her voice was low and professional, but it carried in the silent lobby.

"Sir. You may want to look at property forty-one on the estate list."

She turned the tablet toward him.

41. THE HARBORVIEW GRAND HOTEL. ATLANTIC AVENUE, WATERFRONT.

LAND AND BUILDING: MILLER ESTATE HOLDINGS.

OPERATOR LEASE: MONTH TO MONTH. OWNER APPROVAL REQUIRED FOR ALL PRIVATE EVENTS OVER 200 GUESTS.

Jace read it twice.

Then he lifted his eyes to Cael.

"Saturday," Jace said. "Four hundred people. Every camera in Boston." He let the words sit in the quiet. "At the Harborview Grand, you said."

For the first time since the fireplace, Cael Sterling's smile went still on his face. It did not fall. It froze, like something set in wax. His knuckles whitened around his phone.

Clara had gone white. "Jace. The deposit is in my name. The invitations went out a week ago. My mother's friends, the press..." Her voice cracked. "You wouldn't."

He looked at her for a long moment.

Last February, on her birthday, she had walked past him in this lobby with three friends and white roses dying on his knees, and she had not turned her head.

"I'll think about it," Jace said.

Clara's face crumpled. She turned to Cael, and Cael did not look at her. He was looking at Jace, and the wax smile had gone thin and cold.

"You do that," Cael said softly. "Think hard."

Bennett cleared his throat. "Mr. Miller, sir. The trust has a car outside whenever you..."

The revolving doors spun.

Cold air rushed into the lobby, and with it came four police officers and a detective in a rumpled gray coat. The detective swept the lobby with one look, past the screens, past the phones, and stopped on Jace.

"Jace Carter?"

Every phone in the lobby swung toward the door.

"Turn around and put your hands behind your back." The detective unhooked a pair of cuffs from his belt. "You're under arrest for the murder of Dominic Kowalski."

Jace did not move. "Who?"

The detective held up his phone.

On the screen, a man lay on his back on wet concrete. A fresh white cast covered his right wrist. His eyes were open, staring up into the rain.

They're going to kill me for this. You know that, right?

Ice flooded every vein in Jace's body.

"Wait." Grace Shaw stepped forward. "Detective, my client..."

"Your client," the detective said, "broke this man's wrist at four o'clock this morning in a motel room on Harbor Street. At six, Mr. Kowalski was found dead behind a laundromat." He swiped to a second photo. "And this was on him."

It was a close-up of a black suit jacket, the one from the dining room, folded on a steel evidence table. Across the lapel and down the front ran a long dark stain, dried brown at the edges.

"The blood on his jacket isn't his," the detective said. "The preliminary match came back this afternoon. To the blood we swabbed off the Whitmore fireplace."

He looked up at the glowing screens, at the name shining across every one of them, and then back at Jace.

"It's yours.”