Chapter 6 - THE EMPTY VIAL AND THE MUSIC BOX
“Dorothy?” I whispered, the name catching in my throat.
The frail, seventy-two-year-old piano teacher. The woman who couldn’t even stand up without my help at dinner. She had just assassinated the head of the Hale syndicate in the middle of a hostage standoff.
Victoria stared at the note in Silas’s hand, her grief instantly boiling into absolute rage.
“You hired an old woman to murder my father!” Victoria screamed at Roman, lunging at him with perfectly manicured nails.
Silas grabbed her mid-air, pinning her arms behind her back.
“I didn’t hire anyone,” Roman said, his eyes fixed on the empty glass vial. He turned to me. “Claire. Where is Dorothy?”
My mind raced. “I left her in the dining room when we went into the woods. She said she was too tired to move.”
“She wasn’t tired,” Roman realized grimly. “She was waiting for Vincent.”
Roman looked at his daughter, who was clinging to his side, terrified by the dead body in the armchair.
“Silas,” Roman ordered. “Lock Victoria in the holding cells downstairs. Call the cleaners. And find Dorothy Lane before she leaves this property.”
I grabbed Sam’s hand. “Come on, let’s get you to the kitchen. I need to get some ice on your lip.”
We left the library. The massive estate was swarming with Roman’s men. The engagement party had turned into a crime scene.
In the kitchen, I pressed a bag of frozen peas against Sam’s bruised face.
“Are you okay?” I asked, my hands still shaking.
“I’m fine, Claire,” Sam winced, looking around the massive, stainless-steel kitchen. “But that guy… Roman. He’s really a mafia boss, isn’t he?”
“He is,” I said quietly. “But tonight, he’s just a father trying to protect his kid.”
Before Sam could answer, the kitchen doors swung open. Roman walked in, his suit jacket discarded, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows, revealing the intricate ink of the syndicate tattoos on his forearms.
He didn’t look angry. He looked exhausted.
“Claire,” Roman said softly. “I just wired fifty thousand dollars to your brother’s college account. To cover the tuition, and for the trouble.”
Sam’s jaw dropped. “Fifty grand? Sir, you don’t have to—”
“You protected my daughter,” Roman said, his voice leaving no room for argument. “My family pays its debts.”
He looked at me. “But I need your help one last time tonight. Silas can’t find Dorothy. She’s not in the house. She’s not on the grounds.”
I thought about the frail woman. She couldn’t have walked far in the storm.
“She wouldn’t run,” I said slowly. “She told me she was ready to retire. She came here tonight knowing exactly what she was going to do.”
Roman frowned. “If she didn’t run, where would she hide?”
I thought about the layout of the estate. Then, a memory clicked.
“The old conservatory,” I said. “It’s at the edge of the property. Elena DeLuca used to keep her grand piano out there before she got sick. Dorothy told me they used to sit in there for hours.”
Roman’s eyes widened. “Show me.”
We left Sam with two guards in the kitchen and walked out into the rain. The storm had lessened to a steady drizzle.
We reached the glass-domed conservatory at the edge of the gardens. The lights were off, but a soft, haunting melody was echoing from inside.
Someone was playing a music box.
Roman pushed the glass doors open.
Sitting on a velvet bench in the center of the dark room, listening to a small, wooden music box, was Dorothy Lane.
She looked up as we entered. She didn’t look afraid. She looked entirely at peace.
“It’s a beautiful song, isn’t it, Roman?” Dorothy smiled softly.
Roman walked toward her, kicking the door shut behind him.
“Why did you kill Vincent Hale, Dorothy?” Roman asked, his voice steady but laced with danger.
Dorothy gently closed the lid of the music box. The melody stopped.
“Because your mother couldn’t do it herself,” Dorothy said.
The reversal made the air leave the room.
“Elena didn’t just pay for Rose’s piano lessons,” Dorothy explained, her eyes filling with tears. “Nineteen years ago, Elena found out that Vincent Hale—not your father—was the one who ordered the hit on Maria.”
Roman froze. “Vincent? Why would the Hale syndicate care about my girlfriend?”
“Because Vincent wanted you to marry his daughter, Victoria,” Dorothy said. “Maria was in the way. So Vincent had her killed, and framed your father for it to keep the families fighting.”
Roman’s hands clenched into fists. He had spent nineteen years hating his own father for a murder committed by the man sitting in his library.
“My mother knew?” Roman whispered.
“She found out too late,” Dorothy cried. “She managed to save the baby, but she couldn’t prove Vincent did it without starting a mafia war. She lived with that secret until the day she died. And she asked me to avenge Maria when the time was right.”
Dorothy stood up slowly, reaching into her handbag.
Roman tensed, ready to draw his weapon.
But Dorothy didn’t pull out a gun.
She pulled out a small, heavily rusted key.
“Vincent is dead. Maria is avenged. And Rose is safe,” Dorothy said, handing the key to Roman. “My work is done.”
Roman looked at the key. “What is this?”
“It’s the key to locker 402 at the central train station,” Dorothy said. “Your mother left a package in there for you. She said if Victoria ever found out about Rose, you would need what’s inside to survive.”
But before Roman could take the key, the glass dome of the conservatory suddenly shattered inward.
A heavy, military-grade smoke grenade bounced across the marble floor, hissing violently.
Thick, blinding white smoke instantly filled the room.
I coughed, my eyes burning. “Mr. DeLuca!”
Through the smoke, I saw the shadows of three men in tactical gear smash through the conservatory doors.
They weren’t DeLuca men. They weren’t Hale men.
They grabbed Dorothy by the arms, dragging the screaming old woman into the rain.
May you like
And as the smoke cleared, sitting on the piano bench where Dorothy had just been, was a photograph of Roman’s mother, Elena, with two words scrawled across her face in black marker:
OUR TURN.
