THE COIN OF MEMORY

A cold, terrifying realization bloomed in Leo’s mind like ink spreading through water.

He dropped his arm. The sharpened steel nail slipped from his fingers, falling silently onto the thick Persian rug.

Daniel Chen had not given him the key out of sympathy. He had not given him the voice recorder to help him.

Daniel Chen had sent an eight-year-old orphan to commit a brutal, bloody murder.

If Leo killed Julian Sterling tonight, the police would find the boy at the scene, holding a blood-stained nail. They would find the voice recorder in his pocket. The news headlines tomorrow would not be about Julian Sterling's financial crimes or medical fraud.

The headlines would be about a tragic, deranged homeless boy who broke into a mansion and slaughtered a prominent civic leader in his sleep.

Julian Sterling would die a victim. Maya would be an orphaned heiress.

And Dr. Daniel Chen—the man who had falsified the autopsy reports, the man who held the offshore accounts, the man who had orchestrated the entire web of silence—would walk away completely clean, his primary blackmailer dead, his track record erased, holding forty million dollars of untraceable money.

"He used me," Leo whispered into the warm, scented air of the study.

His voice was no longer that of a terrified child, nor that of a vengeful ghost. It was the clear, sharp voice of a boy who had suddenly seen through the glass of a master manipulator's trap.

Leo looked down at the silver voice recorder resting in his hand.

The red light was still pulsing faintly.

Leo walked quietly over to the mahogany desk. He picked up the silver frame containing Maya's photo, set it neatly in the center of the leather blotter, and placed the silver voice recorder directly beside it.

He took the brass master key from his pocket and laid it beside the recorder.