“My father’s office…” I trailed off.

“You thought of something?” Jared said, pulling me to my feet.

My eyes widened. “Last year, when I was in Jack’s office for the Port of Providence file, one of his cabinets were locked. I never found the keys to it. When I found the file I was looking for, I sort of forgot about it.”

Jared pulled me to my feet, quickly climbing the stairs. I tugged on the drawers of the row of file cabinets until I found one that wouldn’t budge. “That’s it,” I said. “The keys in the desk don’t work. I’ve tried them.”

Jared looked around the room, and then casually yanked the drawer. It made a loud popping noise, but it opened easily enough—for Jared.

“Well, that’s one way to do it,” I grinned.

Jared fingered through each of the papers. “You start with the bottom drawer. We’ll meet in the middle.”

I sat on my knees, pulling open my designated drawer. Old pictures, bank accounts overseas, but nothing about family. The familiar frustration from the last time I had spent rummaging through his office for clues clouded my brain.

Jared powered through three drawers before I finished one, but when he reached the fourth, he stopped. He held a paper in front of his face, and then looked beyond it to the adjacent wall.

“What is it?” I asked. Before he could answer, I noted that it was drawing of a coat of arms, similar to the one hanging from the wall.

“Does the Franks mean anything to you, Nina?” he asked.

I shook my head, pushing myself to my feet. “No. Should it?”

“You’re Irish, aren’t you?”

“Yeah? So?” Some days I had patience for his step-by-step approach of getting to the truth. This was not one of those days.

“It’s a common misconception. Surely Jack wouldn’t display something that didn’t specifically belong to him.”

“You lost me,” I said, hoping he would get to the point.

“Coats Of Arms were designed to designate a knight whose face would’ve been covered during battle. They are inherited from father to son, so it wouldn’t make sense to have a ‘Grey’ coat of arms for an entire family or last name. Jack wasn’t the type to buy into that nonsense, so this must be the original, passed down.”

“Okay.”

Jared scanned the drawing. “This is similar, but it’s not the same. And it’s unlike any crest or coat of arms I’ve ever seen.”

Jared handed the paper to me, and I recoiled at the misshapen beast. It had the body of a large cat, perhaps a panther or leopard, and large paws, I guessed to be the paws of a bear. Seven heads ascended from its body, with horns, and crowns sitting atop those horns. It was grotesque.