Sitting at a long twelve-foot reclaimed chestnut trestle table with an open set of regional maritime surveys and a steaming ceramic mug of dark-roast chicory coffee…
Was Ethan Vance.
I was thirty-seven now.
The paralyzing cynicism of my years in the Manhattan underworld, the terrifying realization of what Claire had suffered in that basement, and the heavy burden of forty years of family secrecy had completely metabolized into an un-shakeable, eighty-year architectural peace; my strength had completely returned, rooted in the bedrock of an un-broken command.
I was no longer the feared mafia boss looking over his shoulder through the tinted glass of an exotic sports car.
I wore an unadorned cream-colored linen work shirt, comfortable dark denim trousers with copper rivets, and clean leather deck shoes. My face was radiant, free of the quiet violence and bitter isolation that had shadowed my eyes when I ruled the waterfront.
Around my left wrist, resting easily against the rolled linen cuff, was Arthur Mercer Senior’s restored 1956 Admiralty Gold Chronometer, its mechanical second hand sweeping with that clean, rhythmic, sixty-cycle tack… tack… tack that had governed fifty years of honest labor.
