Chapter 11 - THE SECOND KEY
“Where are you?” I demanded, keeping my voice low so I wouldn’t wake Julian.
Marcus Ashford chuckled again, a wet, rattling sound.
“The old steel mill on the riverfront. You have thirty minutes, Tessa. Come alone. If I see Marco, or if I hear a single police siren, the key burns.”
The line went dead.
I stared at the phone.
Elena’s safety deposit box required two keys. Marco had one. Marcus had the other.
Without both, the evidence that proved Marco’s innocence—and the truth about Elena’s murder—would stay locked in Switzerland forever.
I looked at Julian, asleep in the hospital bed.
I looked through the glass window into the waiting room, where Mrs. Walsh was asleep with Leo resting against her side.
They were safe here. Surrounded by nurses and security.
I didn’t call Marco.
He was busy securing the flash drive that would save his son’s future and his legitimate businesses.
This was about the past. This was about David.
I walked out of the hospital and flagged down a taxi in the pouring rain.
“The old steel mill on the Delaware River,” I told the driver.
Twenty minutes later, the cab dropped me off at the edge of a massive, rusted industrial complex.
The mill had been abandoned for a decade. Skeletal steel beams reached up into the stormy night sky like broken fingers.
I paid the driver and stepped into the mud.
I pulled the 9mm pistol from my jacket pocket, gripping it tightly with my right hand.
My left arm throbbed in its sling, a constant reminder of Sabrina’s cruelty.
I walked into the cavernous main building.
The wind howled through the broken windows.
“Marcus!” I yelled.
My voice echoed off the rusted machinery.
A single spotlight clicked on at the center of the warehouse floor.
It illuminated a massive industrial incinerator, its iron belly glowing with a fierce orange fire.
Sitting in a wheelchair beside the fire was Marcus Ashford.
His knee was heavily bandaged, his arm in a crude cast. He looked like a beaten dog, but his eyes were still feral.
Standing behind him was a single, massive bodyguard holding a shotgun.
I stopped ten feet away, keeping my gun aimed at the guard.
“I’m here. Give me the key.”
Marcus held up his good hand.
Dangling from his thick fingers was a small, brass key.
Not silver, like Elena’s, but it bore the same distinct jagged teeth.
“David was a smart kid,” Marcus spat.
“When my men cornered him three years ago, he swallowed this key. He thought it would save him. My men had to... extract it after they ran him over.”
Bile rose in my throat.
My husband’s final moments had been absolute terror.
“Why are you giving it to me?” I asked, refusing to let him see me cry.
“I’m not,” Marcus smiled.
He held the brass key directly over the open grate of the incinerator. The flames licked at his knuckles.
“I called you here to watch it burn. Because your interference tonight cost me my daughter and my empire. I want you to go back to Marco Santoro and tell him you failed.”
He opened his fingers.
“No!” I screamed, stepping forward.
Before the key could fall into the fire, a deafening shot rang out.
Not from my gun.
The shotgun in the bodyguard’s hands suddenly exploded in a shower of sparks and splinters, ripped out of his grip by a high-caliber sniper round.
The guard screamed, falling to the floor holding his shattered hands.
Marcus froze.
From the shadows of the catwalk above, a voice echoed.
“Pick up the key, Marcus.”
It was Marco.
I spun around.
Marco stepped out of the darkness, walking down the rusted metal stairs. He held a high-powered tactical rifle in his hands, the barrel still smoking.
“You think I don’t track the GPS on the cell phone I bought for my son?” Marco asked, his voice echoing like thunder in the empty mill.
“I saw you leave the hospital, Tessa. I beat you here by ten minutes.”
Marco walked up to Marcus Ashford.
He didn’t yell. He didn’t threaten.
He simply pressed the hot barrel of the rifle directly against Marcus’s uninjured kneecap.
“Hand the key to Tessa,” Marco commanded softly.
“Or you spend the rest of your life in that wheelchair.”
Marcus Ashford’s bravado shattered.
He looked at the unblinking, merciless eyes of Marco Santoro, and he realized he had finally lost.
His hand trembled as he reached out and handed the brass key to me.
I took it. The metal was warm from the fire.
Marco stepped back.
“The police are waiting outside. You’re going to a prison ward, Marcus. And you’re going to die there.”
Marco turned his back on the broken man.
He walked over to me, gently placing his hand on my good shoulder.
“Let’s go home.”
We walked out of the steel mill together.
The storm was finally breaking. The rain had stopped, and the first faint light of dawn was beginning to bleed over the horizon.
As we reached the armored SUV, Marco stopped.
He looked at me, the harsh light of morning illuminating the exhaustion and relief on his face.
“Julian found the flash drive. The lawyers are clearing the accounts as we speak. Lorenzo’s hostile takeover failed.”
I held up the two keys. One silver, one brass.
“And we have the keys.”
Marco reached out, carefully taking the brass key from my hand.
He looked at it for a long moment, honoring the memory of the wife he had lost, and the husband I had lost.
Then, he put both keys into his pocket.
“You didn’t have to come here alone, Tessa,” Marco said, his voice thick with emotion.
“You could have called me. You don’t have to fight these battles by yourself anymore.”
“I’m used to doing things on my own,” I admitted quietly.
Marco stepped closer.
He gently brushed a wet strand of hair from my cheek.
May you like
“You don’t have to be. Not ever again.”
TITLE: A Seat At The Head Of The Table
