Chapter 3 - THE SILVER LOCKET
The silence in the music room shattered against the weight of my own name.
Bennett.
I stared at the rusted brass key in Marco’s large hand. It couldn’t be real. My family was from a small, working-class suburb outside Milwaukee. We didn’t know billionaires. We certainly didn’t know mafia bosses.
“Why does it say my name?” I choked out, stumbling backward until my hips hit the edge of the piano.
Marco slowly stood up. The sorrow in his eyes had been instantly replaced by a sharp, terrifying calculation. He looked at the key, then at the note, and finally at me.
“Your father was Arthur Bennett,” Marco stated. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” I whispered, my heart hammering furiously. “He owned a frame shop. He died of a stroke three years ago.”
Marco shook his head slowly. “Arthur Bennett didn’t just fix frames, Emma. For twenty years, he was the master forger for the Chicago syndicate. He built the hidden compartments in our vaults. He created the false bottoms in our shipping crates. He was a ghost.”
The floor seemed to tilt beneath my feet.
“No,” I stammered, gripping the piano lid. “No, you’re lying. He smelled like sawdust and cheap coffee. He worked sixty-hour weeks just to pay off the mortgage. We had nothing.”
“He had nothing because he walked away,” Marco said, stepping closer to me. His voice was intense, demanding my absolute focus. “Ten years ago, Arthur came to my father. He wanted out. He wanted to raise his daughter away from the blood. My father let him go, under one condition: he was never to use his skills again.”
“Then why does your wife have a key with his name on it?” I cried.
“Because Elena didn’t trust my men,” Marco said, staring down at the tiny brass key. “If she needed something hidden—something Thomas Voss was willing to kill her for—she wouldn’t use a syndicate safe. She would track down the best hidden-compartment architect in the Midwest.”
My father.
Elena had found my father.
“The frames,” I gasped, the realization hitting me like a physical blow. “My dad made these silver frames. I recognize the tooling on the brass tabs. He didn’t just repair them. He built them specifically to hide these things.”
“And he built whatever this key opens,” Marco finished, his dark eyes locking onto mine.
Daniel tugged on his father’s pant leg. “Dad? Where is Adriana?”
The question snapped Marco back to the present. The immediate, lethal threat that was still in his house.
“Emma,” Marco ordered, his tone shifting into absolute command. “Take Daniel up the back staircase to my private study. Lock the reinforced door. Do not open it for anyone but me.”
“Where are you going?” I asked, grabbing Daniel’s small, trembling hand.
“I’m going to have a very honest conversation with my fiancée about her father,” Marco said, reaching under his suit jacket and drawing a dark, heavy pistol from a shoulder holster.
He didn’t wait for my response. He turned and walked out of the music room.
I didn’t hesitate. I pulled Daniel toward the servant’s corridor that ran behind the main walls of the estate.
We hurried up the narrow, unlit stairs. Daniel was remarkably quiet, his small fingers gripping mine with terrifying strength. He had grown up in a house of whispers and shadows. He knew when to stay silent.
We reached the third floor and slipped into Marco’s private study. I slammed the heavy oak door shut and threw the deadbolt.
The study was dark, illuminated only by the moonlight pouring through the bulletproof windows overlooking Lake Michigan.
“Are we safe here, Emma?” Daniel whispered, sitting on the edge of the leather sofa, his feet barely touching the rug.
“We’re safe,” I promised, though my voice shook. I walked over to him and knelt down, looking into his eyes. “Daniel, when Adriana talked to you… what exactly did she say? Why did she tell you that your mom’s pictures were lies?”
Daniel looked down at his lap. “She said Mom was a thief. She said Mom took something that belonged to her family, and that if I ever found where Mom hid it, I had to give it to her, or Dad would go to prison forever.”
My blood ran cold.
Adriana wasn’t just a gold-digger. She was an operative. She had infiltrated Marco’s life, spent three years playing the perfect, loving fiancée, all to get close to Daniel. She knew Daniel was the key to finding whatever Elena had stolen from Thomas Voss.
Suddenly, my phone buzzed in my apron pocket.
I jumped. I pulled it out. It was an unknown number.
I answered it cautiously. “Hello?”
“Hello, Emma,” a smooth, cultured voice said on the other end. It was Adriana.
“Where are you?” I demanded, keeping my voice low.
“I’m already gone,” Adriana said, the sound of a car engine humming in the background. “I slipped out through the kitchen while Marco was searching the guest rooms. He’s very predictable when he’s angry.”
“He knows everything,” I bluffed. “He has the note. He knows your father killed Elena.”
Adriana laughed. It was a cold, empty sound.
“My father killed Elena because she stole his legacy,” Adriana replied effortlessly. “But that doesn’t matter now. What matters is the key, Emma. I know Marco has it. And I know it has your father’s name on it.”
“You’re not getting it,” I said fiercely.
“Oh, I think I will,” Adriana purred. “Because while Marco was distracted in the music room, I didn’t just leave the house. I took a souvenir.”
My heart stopped.
“What are you talking about?”
“Look in Marco’s desk drawer,” Adriana said. “The bottom left one. Where he keeps his mother’s heirloom rosary.”
I stood up, keeping the phone to my ear, and rushed to the massive mahogany desk. I yanked the bottom left drawer open.
It was empty.
“You stole a rosary?” I asked, confused.
“I didn’t steal it, Emma,” Adriana corrected gently. “I traded for it. I left something else in the drawer.”
I reached my hand all the way to the back of the dark drawer. My fingers brushed against cold metal. I pulled it out.
It was a heavy, silver pocket watch. The glass face was shattered. The hands were frozen at exactly 11:42.
“Do you recognize it?” Adriana asked over the phone.
I stared at the broken watch. My breath completely left my body.
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“This is my father’s watch,” I choked out, tears instantly blinding me. “He lost this years ago.”
“He didn’t lose it,” Adriana said, her voice dropping into a lethal, terrifying whisper. “He dropped it on the dock the night my father killed Elena. Your father was there, Emma. He helped my father cover up the murder.”
