Chapter 2 - THE LOCKED ROOM
The click of the deadbolt sounded like a gunshot in the silent hallway.
Twenty-four guests remained downstairs, guarded by men in tailored suits.
Upstairs, it was just the four of us.
Nicholas.
Marcus.
Vivienne.
And me, holding Ethan’s hand so tightly my knuckles ached.
Nicholas pushed open the heavy oak door.
The air inside his late wife’s bedroom was cold.
It smelled of dried lavender and stale dust.
Nothing had been touched in three years.
The silver brush set still sat on the vanity.
The velvet curtains were drawn tight.
Vivienne stood in the doorway, her arms wrapped around herself.
She was shaking.
“Nicholas, please,” she whispered. “I didn’t do this.”
Nicholas didn’t look at her.
He nodded to Marcus.
The massive security chief stepped into the dark room, sweeping a small black device across the walls.
It clicked.
Rapidly.
He stopped in front of the vanity.
Marcus reached beneath the antique mahogany table.
When his hand emerged, he was holding a second microphone.
Exactly like the one I had found under Ethan’s mattress.
My stomach plummeted.
“Live feed?” Nicholas asked.
Marcus twisted the small device. “Yes, boss. Someone has been listening to this room.”
Vivienne let out a strangled sob. “I swear to you, I have never stepped foot in here. I wouldn't!”
Nicholas slowly turned to face her.
His voice was dangerously quiet.
“Then why did my son say you did?”
He looked down at Ethan.
Ethan was hiding behind my leg, his small fingers digging into my navy dress.
“Ethan,” Nicholas said gently. “Did you see Vivienne in Mommy’s room?”
Ethan peeked out.
He looked at Vivienne.
Then at his father.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“When she dropped the shiny beads.”
Vivienne’s eyes went wide. “I don’t know what he’s talking about!”
I knelt down to Ethan’s eye level.
“What shiny beads, buddy?”
He pointed to the corner of the room, near the heavy velvet drapes.
Marcus walked over.
He crouched.
He reached under the hem of the curtain.
When he stood up, something silver dangled from his massive hand.
A delicate, antique silver rosary.
It caught the dim light from the hallway.
I recognized it instantly.
It wasn’t Vivienne’s.
It was the rosary Nicholas’s late wife, Elena, wore in every family portrait downstairs.
The one that was supposedly buried with her.
Nicholas stopped breathing.
He stepped forward, snatching the beads from Marcus’s hand.
“Where did you get this?” Nicholas’s voice shook the floorboards.
Vivienne backed against the doorframe, her face completely bloodless.
“I… I found it.”
“It was in her casket, Vivienne.”
“No!” She cried out. “No, it wasn’t! Because she wasn’t the one wearing it when she died!”
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Nicholas stared at her.
Then, from the pocket of Vivienne’s ivory silk dress, a cell phone began to ring.
The caller ID lit up the dark hallway.
May you like
It was the name of the man sitting at the head of the dinner table downstairs.
Nicholas’s own brother.
