Chapter 2 - THE WATCH IN SILAS VALE’S HAND
“No.”
The word left Lena’s mouth before fear could stop it.
Fifty people stared at her.
Silas Vale did not move.
Wade Carver was still on his knees between two security men. Owen Price lay on the marble with the club physician working over him. Somewhere beyond the sealed doors, an ambulance siren was growing louder.
And Lena had just refused the most dangerous man in the room.
Silas’s eyes settled on her.
“You’re coming with me,” he repeated.
“I heard you.”
Grant Vale gave a quiet, disbelieving laugh.
Lena turned on Silas before courage abandoned her.
“You move my seat without explanation. Someone leaves a warning on my plate. A man collapses. Another man says my dead father was a thief, and your answer is to order me into a private room?”
Her hands were shaking now.
She hated that Silas noticed.
His voice lowered.
“My answer is to get you away from a room where someone expected you to drink something.”
“Then tell me why.”
Everett Vale finally spoke.
“Perhaps this discussion doesn’t belong in front of guests.”
Lena looked at the elderly patriarch.
“You remembered my father’s name after fourteen years.”
For the first time that evening, Everett’s smile disappeared.
“So maybe it does.”
Silence spread again.
Then Wade laughed from the floor.
“Ask her.”
Jonas Reed tightened his grip on Wade’s shoulder.
Wade winced but kept staring at Lena.
“Ask Mercer’s daughter what he took from Warehouse Nine.”
“My father took nothing.”
“That’s what they told you?”
Silas crossed the room.
“Enough.”
Wade’s expression changed.
Not into fear.
Into satisfaction.
“You still don’t know, do you, Vale?”
Silas stopped.
“Know what?”
Wade looked toward Lena.
“Why she was invited.”
Everett rose slowly, leaning on his silver-headed cane.
“I invited Miss Mercer.”
Silas turned.
That surprised him.
Lena saw it.
So did Grant.
Everett buttoned his jacket.
“Her father died in company service. I thought including his daughter was appropriate.”
“Fourteen years later?” Lena asked.
Everett’s gaze did not waver.
“Some debts are remembered late.”
Before Lena could respond, Jonas’s phone vibrated.
He listened for less than thirty seconds.
Then he looked at Silas.
“Ambulance has Price. Doctor says he was poisoned.”
Celeste gasped.
Grant swore.
Lena looked instinctively at the untouched wine beside her place.
Jonas continued.
“But not from Miss Mercer’s glass.”
Silas went completely still.
“What?”
“The preliminary test on hers is clean.”
Every person at the table seemed to understand the same thing at once.
The warning had been wrong.
Or it had never been a warning.
Lena slowly unfolded the card again.
DO NOT DRINK THE WINE.
A chill moved over her skin.
“If my glass was clean,” she whispered, “why did someone want me to think it wasn’t?”
No one answered.
Jonas looked toward Wade.
Wade’s smile had vanished.
Silas held out his hand.
“Give me the card.”
Lena almost refused again.
Then she placed it in his palm.
He rubbed one corner between his fingers.
His expression changed.
Tiny.
But Lena had spent four years studying the man.
She saw it.
“You recognize the paper,” she said.
Silas looked at Jonas.
Jonas stepped closer.
“What?”
Silas flipped the card over.
A nearly invisible crest appeared when he angled it toward the chandelier.
Vale Meridian.
Executive stationery.
Not the common stock Lena ordered for the boardrooms.
The heavier paper used in one place.
Silas’s private office.
Grant frowned.
“So someone stole paper. That proves nothing.”
“It proves access,” Jonas said.
Everett tapped his cane once.
“Half the executive floor has access.”
“No,” Lena said.
Everyone looked at her.
She knew the supply orders.
The locked cabinets.
Who requested what.
“That stock isn’t kept in the common cabinet.”
Silas’s gaze met hers.
“Correct.”
A new kind of fear entered the room.
Lena looked toward the people around Silas.
Family.
Executives.
Security.
People who had eaten at this table for years.
The message had come from inside his circle.
Silas turned toward her.
“I’ll ask instead of ordering.”
Something in his voice had changed.
“Will you come with me?”
Lena hesitated.
Then nodded.
“On one condition.”
Grant scoffed.
Silas ignored him.
“What condition?”
“Wade doesn’t disappear before I hear what he has to say about my father.”
Jonas glanced at Silas.
Silas answered without hesitation.
“He won’t.”
Wade smiled bitterly.
“You might want to make that promise to him.”
He nodded toward Everett.
Silas’s face hardened.
Jonas hauled Wade away.
Everett watched without protest.
But when Lena followed Silas toward the exit, the old man spoke quietly behind her.
“Your father made the same mistake you’re making.”
Lena stopped.
She turned.
“What mistake?”
“Believing truth is protection.”
Silas stepped between them.
“My uncle is finished talking.”
Everett’s eyes shifted to his nephew.
“That has never been your decision.”
For one second, something old and ugly passed between them.
Then Silas guided Lena from the dining room.
Not touching her.
Simply walking close enough that nobody else could.
They returned to Vale Meridian after midnight.
The forty-first floor was dark except for Lena’s desk lamp, which someone had left burning.
Silas entered his office.
Lena remained near the doorway.
Four years.
She had never crossed that threshold after midnight.
Silas removed his jacket.
“Sit.”
“I’m tired of being told where to sit.”
His mouth almost moved.
Almost.
“Fair.”
He went to the cabinet behind his desk and unlocked it.
Lena watched him remove a small wooden box.
Not company property.
Old.
Hand-carved.
He placed it between them.
“I moved you beside me tonight because somebody accessed your personnel file three times this month.”
Lena’s stomach dropped.
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“You own the security system.”
“Which should tell you how carefully it was done.”
He opened the box.
Inside lay a blackened silver pocket watch.
Lena forgot how to breathe.
She knew the scratches across the back.
She knew the dent beside the winding crown.
Her father had let her hold it when she was a child.
She had watched him set it every Sunday morning at the kitchen table.
“No.”
Her voice broke.
Silas said nothing.
Lena reached for the watch with trembling fingers.
“My mother said it burned with him.”
“It didn’t.”
“Where did you get it?”
Silas looked at her.
“My father had it.”
She stared at him.
“Your father?”
“When Adrian Vale was murdered, this was found inside the locked drawer of his desk.”
Lena sank into the chair she had refused thirty seconds earlier.
Her father had died in Warehouse Nine.
Silas’s father had survived him.
Months separated the two deaths.
“How?”
“I’ve been trying to answer that since I was twenty-three.”
Lena turned the watch over.
There was an inscription she remembered.
D.M. — KEEP TIME HONEST.
But another mark had been carved beneath it.
Small.
Almost invisible.
Three numbers.
9-17-4.
“I’ve never seen that.”
“Neither had I until last week.”
Silas pressed the release.
The watch opened.
The face was cracked.
The hands had stopped at 11:17.
Lena remembered the fire report.
Warehouse Nine had officially ignited at 11:43.
Twenty-six minutes later.
Silas took a thin tool from the box and lifted the inner backing.
Something had been hidden beneath it.
A burned fragment of a photograph.
Lena drew it out.
Three men stood on a loading dock.
Her father.
Adrian Vale.
And a younger Everett Vale.
Daniel Mercer wasn’t wearing an electrician’s uniform.
He was holding a red shipping ledger.
Everett’s hand was wrapped around the other end.
Lena looked up.
Silas spoke quietly.
“Whatever your father stole, Lena…”
May you like
His eyes dropped to the ledger in the photograph.
“…I think my uncle spent fourteen years trying to get it back.”
