CHAPTER 11 #2
"It's debt collection." Cole handed the list back to Mara. "The original Mara called these debts binding and heritable. She built this network so her descendants could call on it. That's us. That's you."
Mara stared at the list. The names blurred in the lantern light—Whitfield, O'Malley, Calloway, Hartley, Briggs, Chen, Rossi, Vitti.
Some of them she recognized from history books.
Some of them she'd seen on billboards and campaign signs.
One of them—Whitfield—had a name partner at a firm that occupied three floors of a skyscraper on Market Street.
"What about Santoro?" Marcus asked. "Leo works for Santoro. Santoro's the one who wants the money. If we go after Leo, Santoro's going to come after us. A lawyer can't protect us from that."
"Maybe not." Mara folded the list and tucked it back into the ledger's pocket. "But Santoro's not the only one with power in this city. And if the original Mara had a police captain in her pocket—" She tapped the page. "There might be someone on this list who can help with Santoro, too."
The room fell quiet. The lantern flickered, its oil running low. Cole moved to adjust the wick, his shadow looming huge against the stone walls. Marcus stood with his arms crossed, his bruised face unreadable, the blueprints now rolled tight in his fist.
"There's more," Mara said. She'd been leafing through the ledger while they talked, and her fingers had found a section near the middle that was different from the rest. No names. No dates. Just codes—letters and numbers arranged in columns, like a cipher.
S-7: 1923-1928. Paid in full.
V-12: 1924-1932. Paid in full, plus interest.
C-3: 1925-1941. Payments irregular. Balance outstanding—$400 (1930 dollars).
R-9: 1926-1933. Paid in full, plus services rendered to temple.
"What is that?" Cole asked.
"I don't know. It's not like the other entries. No names. Just codes." She flipped forward. More codes, dozens of them, spanning pages. Some marked paid. Some marked outstanding. Some marked with notations she couldn't decipher—transferred, forgiven, deferred.
And then, near the end of the coded section, an entry that made her breath catch:
B-1: Marcus Mercer. Gambling debt—$15,000. Transferred to Santoro, 2023. Status: active.
The date was wrong. It couldn't be from the original Mara's time, or Kitty's, or Mira's. The handwriting was different—newer, sharper, written in ballpoint pen instead of fountain pen ink. Someone had been updating this ledger recently. Someone had known about Marcus's debt.
She looked up at Marcus. His face had gone pale.
"That's my debt," he said. "That's—how is that in there? I never—I didn't—"
"You didn't borrow from Santoro directly." Cole's voice was flat. "You borrowed from someone else. Someone who sold the debt to Santoro. Right?"
Marcus nodded, his throat bobbing. "I borrowed from a guy named Russo. He said he was independent. He said he didn't work for anyone. But then he disappeared, and suddenly Santoro's people were calling, and—" He stopped. "Russo. R-9. Is that—?"
Mara checked the coded entry for R-9. "Paid in full, plus services rendered to temple.
" She flipped back through the ledger, looking for any reference to Russo.
Nothing by that name. But the codes—the codes might be the key.
"Someone in the Bennett network sold your debt to Santoro.
Or they worked for Santoro already. Either way, they made sure it ended up in this ledger. "
"Which means Santoro might be connected to the network," Cole said. "Or trying to infiltrate it. If he knows about the tunnels, the temple—"
"He doesn't." Mara closed the ledger. "If he knew, he wouldn't be sending Leo to collect twenty-two thousand dollars.
He'd be sending someone to take the gold we just found.
He'd be taking the temple for himself." Her hand settled on the leather cover.
"Santoro doesn't know what's down here. But someone in the network does.
Someone who's been updating this ledger.
Someone who knows about Marcus's debt and didn't stop it. "
The three of them stood in the lantern light, surrounded by fireproof boxes full of gold and cash and jewelry, and the weight of a century of secrets pressed down on them like deep water.
"We need to find out who's been updating the ledger," Cole said finally. "And we need to do it before Friday. If there's someone inside the network who's working against us—"
"Then we're not as safe as we thought." Mara stood up.
Her legs were stiff from kneeling on the stone floor.
"But we have assets now. We have names. We have leverage.
We have—" She looked at the boxes, the coins, the jewelry.
"We have more than enough to pay off Marcus's debt if we need to.
But if we do that, we're playing their game.
We're acknowledging that Santoro has power over us. "
"You said we weren't paying," Marcus said.
"I said we weren't paying because paying means they win.
But we have options now. Options we didn't have an hour ago.
" She picked up the lantern. The flame was steady, burning bright in its brass housing.
"We can pay the debt and buy time. We can call in one of these debts—Whitfield, O'Malley, whoever—and ask for protection.
We can figure out who's been updating this ledger and find out what they know about Santoro. "
"Or," Cole said, "we can do all three."
Mara looked at him. "All three?"
"Pay the debt. Call in the favors. Investigate the mole." He shrugged. "We have five days. That's enough time to do all of it, if we split the work."
"I can take the ledger," Marcus said. Both Mara and Cole turned to look at him.
He raised his hands, defensive. "Not to keep.
To study. I spent three years doing contractor work for half the old-money families in Philadelphia.
I might recognize some of the names. Addresses.
I might know who to approach and who to avoid. "
"You'd be putting yourself in the open," Cole said. "If Santoro's people see you talking to lawyers—"
"They won't. I'm a contractor. I talk to lawyers all the time—about renovations, about permits, about property lines.
It won't look suspicious." Marcus hesitated.
"And I owe you. I owe both of you. You took me in when I showed up drunk at your door.
You gave me a job. You gave me a place to sleep. You didn't have to do any of that."
"You're my brother," Cole said.
"I know. But that doesn't mean you owed me anything." Marcus's voice was steadier now. The trembling in his hands had stopped. "Let me do this. Let me help."
Cole looked at Mara. She nodded.
"Fine," Cole said. "You take the list of descendants. You cross-reference it with what you know. But you don't approach anyone without talking to us first. Understood?"
"Understood."
Mara handed Marcus the folded paper from the back of the ledger. He took it carefully, as if it might crumble in his fingers. "There are six families still in Philadelphia," she said. "Start with them. See if any of them are in a position to help."
"What about the codes?" Marcus asked. "The one with my name on it. B-1."
"We'll figure that out too." She turned to Cole. "You said you had contacts from the fire department. People who might know about Santoro. About Leo. Who he is. Where he operates. How to reach him if we need to."
"I can make some calls. Quiet ones." Cole rubbed his jaw. "There's a guy I used to work with—retired now, but he still knows people. He might have information."
"Good. I'll take the diary and the original ledger entries. I want to see if there's any mention of Santoro, Russo, or anyone connected to them. The original Mara was meticulous about her records. If there's a connection, it'll be in there somewhere."
She hesitated. The lantern light was beginning to dim—the oil really was running low now. They'd been down here for hours, and the Friday deadline was still days away, but suddenly it felt much closer.
"There's still the final chamber," she said. "The one the diary mentioned. Below this room. Gold. Weapons. A list of allies." She touched the pendant at her throat. "We haven't found the entrance yet."
Cole's flashlight swept the floor. "The diary said below. But this room is already thirty feet below the temple. How much deeper could it go?"
"Philadelphia has tunnels people don't know about," Marcus said.
"Sewers. Steam tunnels. Old coal chutes.
I've worked in buildings that had subbasements nobody remembered building.
" He pointed to the floor. "If there's something under this room, there has to be an access point. A trapdoor. A hatch. Something."
They spread out, searching. The floor was flagstone, the same rough stone as the walls, but older—these stones had been cut before the original Mara's time, before the speakeasy, before the tunnels had been carved.
Mara knelt and ran her fingers along the seams between the stones. Most were tight. One was not.
"There's a draft," she said. "Coming from this seam."
Cole knelt beside her and held his hand over the crack. A faint current of air moved against his palm—cold, smelling of earth and something else. Something metallic. "There's a space underneath. The draft means there's ventilation. An air shaft, maybe, or a connection to the sewers."
"Or another room."
The flagstone was heavy—too heavy for one person to lift.
It took all three of them, straining, to wedge their fingers into the seam and lever it upward.
The stone ground against its neighbors, a sound like teeth grinding, and then it was free—propped on its edge, revealing a dark square in the floor.
A ladder descended into the darkness. Iron rungs, set into the stone wall, rusted but still solid. The space below was smaller than the cache room—maybe eight feet by eight, by the look of it. A chamber, not a tunnel. A final hiding place.