Chapter 2 - THE KEY AROUND HER NECK
Harper forgot about the ballroom.
Forgot Diana.
Forgot the hundred people pretending not to stare.
Her fingers closed around the little silver key.
“My mother gave this to me when I was twelve.”
Victor’s expression remained unreadable.
“What exactly did she tell you?”
Harper could still see Evelyn Callaway lying beneath a pale hospital blanket, her once-thick brown hair reduced to soft wisps around her face.
“She said I should keep it where my father couldn’t find it.”
Victor’s jaw tightened.
That was the first moment Harper became truly frightened.
Not of him.
Of the memory.
Diana stepped between them.
“This is ridiculous.”
Victor looked over Harper’s shoulder. “Is it?”
“Yes.” Diana’s confidence was returning, sharpened by humiliation. “Our mother bought antiques constantly. Maybe she picked it up somewhere. Harper has turned one piece of costume jewelry into her entire personality.”
Harper flinched.
Victor noticed.
He took one slow step toward Diana.
“You enjoy doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Cutting her.”
Diana’s face reddened.
“You don’t know anything about our family.”
“No,” Victor said. “But I know what contempt looks like.”
Harper pulled his jacket tighter around herself.
“Mr. Rossi, what does the key open?”
Victor looked at her for a long moment.
“A box.”
“What box?”
“One that disappeared eighteen years ago.”
Harper’s stomach tightened.
Victor reached inside his vest and removed his phone, but instead of calling anyone, he opened an old photograph.
He handed it to Harper.
The image had faded at the edges.
A younger Victor stood beside a dark-haired woman Harper recognized only from newspaper archives as Elena Rossi, Victor’s mother.
Beside Elena stood Evelyn Callaway.
Harper’s mother.
They were laughing.
Actually laughing.
Their arms were linked, and around Elena’s neck hung Harper’s key.
Harper stared.
“My mother knew yours?”
“Very well.”
Diana snatched the phone.
Her face changed.
Only for a second.
But Harper saw it.
“You knew,” Harper whispered.
Diana shoved the phone back toward Victor. “I knew Mom had met Mrs. Rossi. Dad mentioned it once.”
“No,” Harper said. “That wasn’t your I’ve-heard-the-name face.”
Diana’s eyes flashed.
Victor took back his phone.
“Your father is here tonight?”
Diana said nothing.
Harper nodded toward the private mezzanine. “He was meeting investors upstairs.”
Victor glanced toward the staircase.
“Then we ask him.”
Diana caught Harper’s wrist.
Hard.
“No.”
Victor’s eyes dropped to Diana’s hand.
She released Harper immediately.
Diana lowered her voice. “Dad’s under enough pressure. Harper, please. Don’t turn this into one of your dramas.”
There it was again.
The old mechanism.
Make Harper doubt what she had seen.
What she remembered.
What she felt.
Harper looked down at her bare feet.
A spot of blood stained the white marble.
Victor followed her gaze.
Without saying anything, he signaled a waiter and asked for a first-aid kit.
It was such a strangely ordinary gesture that Harper looked at him in surprise.
“What?”
“People usually send someone else.”
“To do what?”
“Help.”
Victor’s mouth moved slightly.
Not quite a smile.
“I have people for many things. Thinking isn’t one of them.”
The first-aid kit arrived.
Victor crouched.
The most feared man in the ballroom went down on one knee in front of Harper Callaway and placed a small bandage over the cut on her heel.
Whispers moved through the room like wind through dry leaves.
Harper’s face burned.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
Diana looked furious enough to shatter glass.
Then a man appeared beside Victor.
Late fifties. Gray suit. Narrow face.
“Mr. Rossi.”
Victor stood.
The man whispered something.
Victor’s expression hardened.
“What happened?”
“There’s a problem upstairs.”
Harper’s pulse jumped.
“My father?”
The man hesitated.
Victor answered for him.
“Your father left.”
Diana blinked. “Left?”
“Through the service entrance seven minutes ago.”
“That makes no sense.”
Victor’s gaze shifted to Diana.
“He left after receiving a photograph.”
Harper felt cold.
“What photograph?”
Victor’s man handed him an envelope.
Inside was a surveillance print.
Harper recognized the scene immediately.
Her father, Charles Callaway, standing beside a parking garage elevator that afternoon.
Another man faced him.
Harper didn’t know him.
Victor did.
His eyes went flat.
“Who is he?” Harper asked.
“My uncle.”
Diana gave a nervous laugh. “So?”
Victor looked at her.
“My uncle has been trying to destroy me for six years.”
Silence.
Harper touched the key again.
“Why would Dad meet him?”
“That,” Victor said, “is becoming a very expensive question.”
Diana suddenly grabbed her coat from the chair.
“We’re leaving.”
Harper stared at her.
“Dad disappeared after meeting Victor’s uncle and you want to go home?”
“Yes, because unlike you, I’m not interested in getting dragged into whatever criminal soap opera this is.”
She seized Harper’s arm again.
Harper pulled away.
“No.”
Diana froze.
It was such a small word.
Harper had said it before, but never like this.
“No,” Harper repeated. “I’m staying until I understand why Mom had that key.”
Diana stared at her younger sister.
Then something unexpected appeared beneath the anger.
Fear.
Real fear.
“Harper,” she whispered. “Please.”
Victor noticed it too.
“What are you afraid she’ll find?”
Diana’s face hardened instantly.
“Go to hell.”
She turned.
Victor’s man blocked her path.
Victor shook his head once.
The man moved aside.
“I’m not holding anyone here,” Victor said.
Diana looked back at Harper.
“If you go with him, don’t come crying to me when you discover Mom wasn’t the saint you’ve spent fifteen years pretending she was.”
Harper’s breath caught.
“What does that mean?”
But Diana walked away.
Harper started after her.
Victor caught her gently by the elbow.
“Let her go.”
“She knows something.”
“Yes.”
“Then why aren’t you stopping her?”
“Because frightened people usually run toward whatever they’re trying to protect.”
Harper looked toward the ballroom doors.
Diana had already disappeared.
Victor handed his phone to the gray-suited man.
“Follow her. Distance only.”
The man nodded.
Harper looked at Victor.
“You planned that.”
“I hoped for it.”
She should have been horrified.
Instead, for the first time that evening, she felt like someone else understood that Diana’s behavior meant something.
Victor gestured toward the silver key.
“There’s somewhere we need to go.”
“Where?”
“My mother’s old apartment.”
Harper stared at him.
“You still have it?”
“I bought the building when the landlord tried to sell it after she died.”
That answer told Harper more about Victor than he probably intended.
Twenty minutes later, she was in the back of a black sedan beside him, still wearing his jacket.
The city slid past beneath falling snow.
Victor had given her a pair of black hotel slippers.
They were ugly.
They were also the most comfortable things she had worn all night.
“Why did your mother know mine?” Harper asked.
Victor watched the street.
“They met when your mother was twenty-three. She was working bookkeeping jobs. My mother was running accounts for a neighborhood import business.”
“Your family business?”
“Yes.”
Harper understood what he wasn't saying.
“What happened between them?”
Victor was quiet.
“Something involving your father.”
The car stopped outside a narrow brick building in Little Italy.
Victor led Harper upstairs.
The apartment had been preserved but not embalmed. Furniture remained beneath clean white covers. Family photographs stood on shelves.
Victor walked to an old walnut secretary desk.
There was a tiny silver lock.
Harper’s heart began pounding.
She removed the key.
It fit.
The compartment clicked open.
Inside lay a velvet pouch, a yellowed train ticket, and an envelope bearing Evelyn Callaway’s handwriting.
Harper’s hands trembled.
She opened the envelope.
There was only one sheet.
Elena,
If Charles discovers what we did, he will take everything.
Keep the original safe.
If anything happens to me, Harper must be the one who sees it.
Harper stopped reading.
Victor had gone completely still.
Beneath the letter was a photograph.
Her mother stood outside a courthouse holding a bundled infant.
On the back, in Elena Rossi’s handwriting, were five words.
May you like
Harper deserves to know whose child she is.
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