Chapter 2 - THE BROKEN WATCH
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Mia looked from Adrian to me, sensing she had stepped into something bigger than a six-year-old could understand.
“Mommy?”
“It’s okay, sweetheart.”
It wasn’t.
Adrian’s eyes remained on me.
“Where is the watch?”
I swallowed. “At home.”
“What was the man’s name?”
That question frightened me more.
“Daniel Reed.”
One of Adrian’s guards shifted.
Adrian didn’t.
But something emptied out of his face.
“What did you say?”
“Daniel Reed.”
Adrian slowly removed his silver watch.
He placed it on the desk.
“Show me yours.”
“I told you. It’s at my apartment.”
“Then we’re going to your apartment.”
My fear turned to anger.
“No.”
The guards glanced at me as though I had just slapped him.
Adrian’s voice lowered.
“Ms. Walsh—”
“I’m your employee, Mr. Kane. You don’t get to search my home because my daughter noticed a picture.”
Mia pressed against my leg.
That stopped him.
Adrian looked at her, then back at me.
“You’re right.”
I hadn’t expected those words.
“Bring it tomorrow,” he said. “Voluntarily.”
“Why?”
His jaw tightened.
“Because Daniel Reed wasn’t his name.”
The room seemed to tilt.
I stared at him.
Adrian picked up his watch and turned it over.
On the back were two tiny initials.
A.K.
“My father had three of these made,” he said. “One for himself. One for me.”
He stopped.
“And one for my younger brother.”
I felt cold.
“No.”
“His name was Daniel Kane.”
“No.”
Mia looked up. “Mommy, who’s Daniel?”
I knelt immediately.
“Your daddy.”
She frowned. “I know that.”
Adrian turned away.
For the first time, the feared man I had worked for almost a year looked less like a crime boss than someone who had been punched where nobody could see.
“When did he die?” he asked.
“Six years ago.”
“How?”
“Car accident.”
Adrian looked back.
“Where?”
“Outside Albany.”
His expression hardened.
“What date?”
“October seventeenth.”
The glass in his hand cracked.
One of the guards stepped forward.
“Boss.”
Adrian released it.
Blood appeared across his palm.
Mia gasped.
“You’re bleeding.”
“I’m fine.”
“You need a Band-Aid.”
Something painful crossed his face.
He crouched.
“I probably do.”
Mia opened the tiny purple backpack hanging from her shoulders and produced a bandage covered in yellow stars.
Adrian Kane let a six-year-old put it across his palm.
Then he stood and looked at me.
“My brother disappeared on October fifteenth.”
My mouth went dry.
“He didn’t disappear. He came home.”
“To you?”
“Yes.”
“What condition was he in?”
The question pulled me backward six years.
Daniel entering our little Queens apartment after midnight.
Wet coat.
Split lip.
Fear in his eyes.
He had held me for almost a full minute without speaking.
Then he took off his watch.
“Keep this for Mia.”
I had laughed because I was eight months pregnant.
“We don’t know it’s a girl.”
“I do.”
Two days later, police told me his car had gone through a guardrail.
I had never seen him alive again.
“He was hurt,” I whispered.
Adrian’s eyes sharpened.
“How?”
“He wouldn’t tell me.”
“Did he give you anything?”
I hesitated.
That was enough.
Adrian saw it.
“What?”
“Nothing important.”
“Emma.”
I hated the authority in his voice.
More than that, I hated that Daniel had used the same tone whenever he knew I was hiding something.
“He gave me his watch.”
“Only the watch?”
I remembered the wooden box.
The photograph.
And something else.
A brass key Daniel had taped beneath the watch cushion.
I had never known what it opened.
“Yes,” I lied.
Adrian studied me.
He knew.
But he didn’t expose me in front of Mia.
Instead, he ordered everyone from the room except one guard, a gray-haired man named Marcus.
Then he told Marcus, “Pull Daniel’s file.”
Marcus didn’t move.
Adrian noticed.
“Now.”
Marcus looked at me.
That frightened me.
Finally he said, “There is no file.”
Adrian’s voice became dangerously quiet.
“What do you mean?”
“It was removed.”
“By whom?”
Marcus hesitated.
“Your uncle.”
Adrian’s face changed.
Victor Kane.
I knew the name. Everyone in the mansion did.
Adrian’s uncle had raised him after his father died. He was in his sixties now and supposedly retired, though staff still treated his visits like inspections.
“Why would Victor remove Daniel’s file?” I asked.
Neither man answered.
Mia tugged my sleeve.
“Mommy, can we go home?”
“Yes.”
Adrian nodded.
“Marcus will drive you.”
“We can take the subway.”
“No.”
I opened my mouth.
“Not as an order,” he said. “As a precaution.”
That frightened me more than an order would have.
An hour later, Mia and I reached our apartment.
Nothing looked disturbed.
Still, I locked the door twice.
I waited until Mia was coloring at the kitchen table before pulling the wooden box from beneath my bed.
Daniel’s photograph lay on top.
He was smiling beside an old pickup truck, one hand resting over my pregnant stomach.
On his wrist was the broken silver watch.
For six years, I had believed Daniel Reed was an ordinary man who had hidden some dangerous mistakes from me.
Now I looked at his face differently.
At the dark hair.
The strong jaw.
The eyes.
God.
How had I never seen it?
He looked like Adrian.
Not identical.
But enough.
My hands trembled as I lifted the watch.
The glass was cracked across the lion.
Underneath it sat the brass key.
And beneath the key was something that had not been there before.
A folded piece of paper.
I opened it.
Three words were written in Daniel’s handwriting.
TRUST ADRIAN. NOT VICTOR.
I stared at the message.
Then I heard Mia behind me.
“Mommy?”
I turned.
She was holding Daniel’s photograph.
But she wasn’t looking at him.
She was pointing to a man standing far in the background beside the truck.
A man I had never noticed.
“Isn’t that the old man from Mr. Adrian’s house?”
My blood ran cold.
May you like
Because she was right.
The man watching Daniel from across the parking lot was Victor Kane.
