Chapter 251: More Secrets in the Safe
(SASHA)
Before we moved to our current residence, my father lived on a corner block in the West Side, in a gardened, four-story luxury mansion. It’s actually a landmark in the city, built in the early nineteen hundreds by a wealthy tobacco merchant.
When he bought it, it was falling apart. But over the years, My Father had it restored in painstaking, loving detail, including the reason he bought it in the first place: the secret passageway from the cellar that originally led down to the river.
The reconstructed passageway only extends as far as the other end of the block.
The bright white facade of the mansion makes it stand out among the darker buildings surrounding it. I had it cleaned from the tarry smog clinging to its marble exterior during the renovations carried out after My father ’s death, and I’m glad now that I did. It shines even brighter than it did in my memory. We’ve had it emptied of Miles’s security outfitters for the day, though their tools and workbenches still clutter the opening of the mansion.
"I wish you could have seen it before," I tell Tyler after Miles unlocks the front door. I haven’t been here since for a while now. But I had to see it for myself, just once.
Since then, all I’ve seen are photographs of the repairs and renovations. I haven’t been able to bring myself to step over the threshold again until today.
"It’s very beautiful," Tyler says, as we walk slowly in. "I can see it must have been...a palace, of sorts."
Very few mansions from the Gilded Age survive intact around here and the restoration work that my father carried out was faithful to the original interior design.
The floors beyond the marble foyer are shining, polished hardwood, and the coffered ceilings throughout the first floor are ornate, hand-carved wooden honeycombs, echoed in the carved staircases and panel detailing around the fireplaces.
I wish Tyler could have seen it with all the furniture, rugs and ornaments in place, but they’ve been placed in storage while the workers replaster the walls, which Miles has had reinforced, and they are still to be repainted and the wallpaper replaced.