FATAL CONTRACT

Chapter Six: The Old Accounts

The call came at noon. Not her brother, but a man whose number she had not saved, voice pressed very low, wind in the background, as if standing in an empty yard.

"Miss Su," he said, "your brother's appetite has been good these two days; only he cries at night."

Ava drew the silver dagger from the skirt fold and pressed it back. The hilt dug into her palm, and she steadied.

"What do you want."

"Tomorrow morning, before Mr. Locke leaves, open his study door for one minute," the other laughed. "Just one minute. You can do it."

"And if I can't?"

"Then you'll listen to him cry on the phone all morning," the call ended.

She did not dial back. Dialing back would only hear the other's price, and the price would only climb. She stored the number in her head — not the phone, the head. Her father had taught her: what can be remembered, leave no trace.

One minute. The study. Door open.

What this person wanted was not a thing, but for her to glance at what Lucian was investigating. That document of his with the photograph bore Zhou Jingshan on its back. The opponent and the Zhou family were in this together.

She should have been afraid. But what she feared was not this. She feared that she was already thinking whether this one minute could be exchanged for what she wanted.

She dialed that old man's number. Of her father's old men, this was the only one still able to pass word — surname Zheng, running a watch repair shop three streets over.

Uncle Zheng recognized her voice and fell silent three seconds.

"If your father were still alive," he said, "the first thing he'd do is tell me not to take your call."

"That's why I called," she said. "Zhou Jingshan — do you know him."

The other end drew a breath.

"I know him. Your father's old adversary, and the adversary your father once spared. The Zhou family erred in earlier years; your father held their leverage and did not press them to death. Later the two houses settled their account, and kept to their own waters."

"Did he kill my father?"

"That I cannot say," Uncle Zheng did not pause this time. "But half a year before your father died, Zhou Jingshan sent word through a man, saying he owed your father a life, and to speak if ever there was a need. Words like that are not a killer's."

Ava set the phone face-down on the table.

Her conclusion of "believed for half the night" was crooked from the root. Zhou Jingshan knew her father, owed her father, was not her father's killer. Last night's certainty was shattered to bits by Uncle Zheng's three sentences. Yet the new question weighed heavier: if not Zhou Jingshan, then why had the old man by the window at the banquet spoken aloud "Su Zhengqing's daughter"? He knew her, knew her father, yet said those words to the whole hall — this was no old acquaintance, but a reveal of cards.

She thought again through Lucian's document. On its back, the name Zhou Jingshan — what Lucian was investigating. That is, Lucian had also set his eye on the Zhou family.

This was strange.

Lucian said "I'm investigating your father's death," and gave her two things in exchange: stand at his side, and the names of her father's old men still reachable. She gave the name, got the blade back. Yet from first to last he did not say that the trail he followed ended also at the Zhou family.

Two people, each investigating on their own, arrived at the same family's door.

She did not think this layer through, but her body decided for her: this overlap was her new chip. Whether Lucian kept from her that he was investigating the Zhous for fear she would misuse it, or for fear she would dig where she should not — either way, what he hid was what she could pry.

Her brother's side could not wait. She pinned the silver dagger back into the skirt fold and went out. The watch repair shop was in the back alley; behind Uncle Zheng's counter was a hidden door, inside which lay the place her father had once kept the old ledger.

The ledger was still there, coated in dust. She turned to its last page; her father's handwriting suddenly turned erratic, as if written with a trembling hand—

"The Zhou family's debt is not a life, but evidence. That thing is in Lucian's hands. Don't go asking for it; he won't give it. Only on the day he offers it of his own will may you trust him."

Ava stared at that line.

In Lucian's hands was something that could convict the Zhou family. And what Lucian investigated of the Zhous might be precisely this old account her father left. Her father bade her "wait until he offers it of his own will"; Lucian, though, had made this into a game he would not name.

She closed the ledger.

Now she held three things: the photograph, the torn page, and the back of Lucian's document bearing Zhou Jingshan. The three fitted together pointing to the same matter — someone killed her father, the evidence was in Lucian's hands, Lucian was slowly drawing the net, and she was kept blind in the middle, a piece first married in, then pushed out to meet the enemy.

But once a piece sees the board, it is no longer only a piece.

When she stepped out of the hidden door, Uncle Zheng was polishing a pocket watch, head not lifting.

"Your father's last words," he said, "were to let you live, not to let you win."

Ava stood at the alley mouth, the sun hot on her back. She felt the cold dagger in the skirt fold.

"Living and winning," she said, "are sometimes one and the same."

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Unknown number.

She did not answer. First she returned to the mansion and examined the locks on Lucian's study door — three of them, two electronic, one mechanical. One minute was not enough to open three, but enough to open the first and press an ear to it, listening for the sound of papers being turned within.

Tomorrow morning, she would stand beside that door. Open it, or not — that was her own affair, not for the person on the other end of the line to decide.

As for that unknown number, she meant to answer only when her brother truly came to harm. Until then, every call was a rope in the other's hand; if she did not pull, the rope loosened an inch.

She gripped the dagger tight. The thorn lodged in her mind hurt less today — because today, she finally knew where to press.