“That’s the one.” My voice sounds distant, like it belongs to someone else. “Dad said the museum was the perfect place to hide it. Sunlight, armed guards, insurance forms out the ass. Kress paid him forty-two million, split over three shell accounts. And that wasn’t the only deal. There were others—most of them smaller, but same buyer.”
Stryker exhales through his nose, a slow, controlled sound. “Kress looks legitimate on paper. Philanthropist, old money, spotless reputation.”
“So he wants people to believe. He’s dirty as they come.”
“Yeah.” He reaches for my hand, thumb stroking over my knuckles like he’s trying to rub the tremor out of me. “If it had gone to anyone truly clean, we would have recovered it by now. Insurance companies would have screamed. Interpol would have moved. The fact that it vanished completely? That’s how Hawkeye knew dirty money was hiding it.”
His eyes lock on mine, fierce and absolutely certain.
“Which means all of this is fixable. We get account numbers, amounts, selected parts of the diary to the right people. Maybe an anonymous tip. Kress gets raided; the collection resurfaces. Hawkeye gets credit for the recovery, the clients get their heirlooms back, and no one ever has to know where the information came from.”
A tremor rolls through me—not fear this time, but something terrifyingly close to relief.
“You’re not the criminal here,” he insists. “You’re the witness.”
My heart misses a beat.
“And now we have to deal with what your father left you.”
He shifts me so that I’m facing him, legs tangled with his, chest to chest. His heat surrounds me, steadies me.
“Show me, Lyra.”
My fingers shaking, I unclasp the locket. I’ve worn it for so long, protected it with my life.
Placing it in Stryker’s palm feels monumental. Like surrendering more than metal and memory.
His fingers curl around it gently, with reverence. “Go on.”
I press my thumb to the hidden ridge, and the hinge clicks open with a soft metallic sigh.
Then I point out the secret panel.
The vellum inside glows faintly in the lamplight—the ink old, curling, delicate.
Stryker inhales sharply, muscles coiling beneath his tactical gear.
Then I reach into my coat and pull out the fob, giving it to him.
“Lyra…” His voice drops. “I’ve seen this before.”
My pulse kicks. “You have?” I’ve done tons of research and turned up nothing.
He nods once, eyes fixed on the symbol like it’s a ghost from a briefing he thought he’d never encounter.
“In a Hawkeye intel report.” He’s quiet for a moment. “High-level. Nothing concrete. But they flagged the fob as connected to something called the Tsar’s Tear.”
“I don’t…” I frown. “I don’t understand.”
“We thought it was mostly legend. Supposedly Alexei Mikhailovich Volkov, a Russian aristocrat, crafted the Tsar’s Tear for Nicholas II. It was meant as a coronation anniversary gift.”
“What is it?”
“A forty-five to fifty-five carat blue star sapphire, with a rare six-rayed asterism.”
“Forty-five to fifty-five carats?” My breath catches. A gem like that is museum-grade—basically impossible to insure.
“Supposedly it glows under light as if it’s lit from within.”
