Chapter 1 - The Key Inside the Portrait
Emily Carter had spent three months caring for seven-year-old Olivia DeLuca at the family estate outside Greenwich, Connecticut.
She knew Olivia was quiet. She knew the little girl still grieved for her mother, Alexandra, who had supposedly died six years earlier in an accident at the Beaumont Hotel in Manhattan.
What Emily didn't understand was why Olivia kept drawing the same hotel hallway.
The same brass elevator.
The same number.
614.
Everything changed during Olivia's charity art exhibition when Nicholas DeLuca's fiancée, Claire Beaumont, ordered Emily to destroy Olivia's favorite portrait in front of more than one hundred guests.
Nicholas stopped her.
Minutes later, the lights went out.
When they returned, the portrait had been slashed—and a brass key fell from inside the canvas.
It was stamped 614.
Claire recognized it before anyone explained what it was.
Nicholas noticed.
So did Emily.
Olivia revealed that her retired art teacher, Mr. Bell, had hidden the key because someone might steal her drawings. Those drawings showed the Beaumont Hotel, a woman in a yellow coat, and Alexandra lying in a hallway.
Claire had confiscated them.
Worse, she had threatened Emily's brother to keep Emily quiet.
Nicholas discovered Mr. Bell had never moved to Arizona. He had been hospitalized after being found unconscious near the Beaumont Hotel.
Bell revealed that 614 referred to a hidden mezzanine reached by elevator fourteen.
Nicholas, Emily, Olivia, and Marcus entered the sealed level and found hotel records, photographs, and one impossible picture.
Alexandra.
Alive.
Three weeks after her official death.
Then an old landline rang.
Nicholas answered.
A woman's voice said his name.
Alexandra's voice.
And before the line died, she whispered:
May you like
“Before you ask where I've been… ask your fiancée why she was paid to identify my body.”
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