Chapter 1 - THE DOOR THAT LOCKED FROM THE INSIDE
A father’s love was supposed to be unconditional.
Morgana’s had a price.
Forty thousand dollars and a clean slate at the card tables were enough for Jason Blake to hand over his only daughter to a man who measured life in ledgers and bullet casings.
Morgana expected the worst.
A basement.
A locked room.
A monster.
Instead, what Roman Costa did after showing her to a bedroom overturned everything she thought she understood about monsters.
The kitchen smelled of stale beer and rotting onions.
It always did.
Morgana stood beside the sink gripping the edge of the chipped Formica counter until her knuckles whitened.
Across the room, her father sat at the unstable dining table.
Jason was a small man, made smaller by the accumulated weight of his failures.
His hands trembled while he lit a cigarette.
The man seated opposite him looked as though he belonged in another world.
Roman Costa wore a dark wool suit that probably cost more than Jason’s entire house.
He sat perfectly still.
A sheet of paper rested on the table.
“Forty thousand,” Jason muttered. “That clears everything.”
“With interest,” Roman said.
Jason finally looked toward Morgana.
“She settles it.”
Cold spread through her body.
Morgana was twenty-two.
She worked double shifts at a roadside diner to keep electricity running in the house.
She patched walls after Jason punched them.
She bought groceries he sold for gambling money.
She had survived him.
Now he was selling her to survive himself.
“She settles it,” Roman repeated.
Jason rushed to explain.
“She’s quiet. Works hard. Keeps things clean.”
“You can shut up, Jason.”
Roman never raised his voice.
Jason immediately obeyed.
Roman stood.
Then he looked directly at Morgana.
“Pack your things.”
Morgana’s hand twitched toward the cast-iron skillet beside the sink.
But life with Jason had taught her that anger could become dangerous when you had nowhere to go.
“I don’t have much.”
“Take what matters.”
“You have ten minutes.”
Upstairs, Morgana packed two diner uniforms, jeans, sweaters, toiletries and one framed photograph of her mother.
Nine minutes later, she returned.
Jason caught her elbow.
“Morgana, honey. I had to. They were going to kill me.”
She stared at his fingers on her sleeve.
“I hope they still do.”
Jason recoiled.
Roman opened the front door.
Morgana walked through.
She never looked back.
In the armored SUV, she pressed the duffel bag against her chest.
Roman sat two feet away.
Morgana studied the door handle.
“If I opened that at a traffic light—”
“The doors lock from the front,” Roman said.
She froze.
He looked toward her.
“The vehicle is armored. Rear doors don’t open while it’s moving.”
“That’s supposed to reassure me?”
“No.”
The massive driver glanced into the rearview mirror.
Roman continued.
“When we stop, you can open it.”
Morgana stared.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I don't expect anything from you.”
They drove another twenty minutes.
The neighborhoods changed.
Pawnshops disappeared.
Then laundromats.
Then cracked sidewalks.
Eventually iron gates opened onto a stone house overlooking the river.
Not a mansion from a fairy tale.
Something older.
Heavy.
Quiet.
Two security men stood outside.
Neither looked at Morgana longer than necessary.
That somehow made her more nervous.
Roman led her upstairs.
“Where are we going?”
“Your room.”
“My room?”
“For tonight.”
He opened a door.
Large bed.
Bathroom.
Wardrobe.
A small sitting area.
No bars.
No cameras she could see.
Morgana stayed in the doorway.
Roman placed a brass key on a table.
“The door locks from the inside.”
She looked at him.
“What?”
“No one has another key except the emergency master held by security.”
He stepped back into the hallway.
“If you want something to block the door anyway, the chair is heavy.”
Morgana stared.
“What exactly do you think you bought tonight?”
His expression changed.
“I didn't buy you.”
“My father gave me to you.”
“Your father tried.”
“What's the difference?”
Roman looked at her for a long moment.
Then reached into his jacket.
Morgana flinched.
He stopped.
Slowly removed a folded piece of paper.
Jason’s debt ledger.
Roman tore it down the middle.
Then again.
And again.
Forty thousand dollars became paper scraps in his palm.
“The difference,” Roman said quietly, “is that his debt disappeared the second you walked out of his house.”
Morgana stared.
“Why?”
“Because I needed to know whether Jason Blake would actually do it.”
Her fear became anger.
“You tested him with me?”
“No.”
Roman’s jaw tightened.
“I gave him one last opportunity to prove something I hoped I was wrong about.”
“What?”
“That he would sell his daughter exactly the way he sold her mother.”
The world seemed to stop.
“My mother?”
Roman’s eyes moved toward the framed photograph sticking out of her duffel bag.
Elena Blake.
Dark hair.
Green eyes.
A smile Morgana remembered mostly from dreams.
Morgana grabbed the frame.
“What do you know about my mother?”
Roman did not answer immediately.
That frightened her.
“Roman.”
He looked at her.
“Your mother did not die in the accident your father told you about.”
Morgana forgot to breathe.
“What?”
“Elena knew my family.”
“No.”
“She knew my father.”
“No.”
“And twenty years ago, three days before she disappeared, she gave him something people have been killing each other to find ever since.”
Morgana’s hands began shaking.
“My mother died when I was two.”
Roman’s face hardened with something that looked disturbingly like regret.
“She died.”
He paused.
“But the car accident wasn't an accident.”
Morgana backed away.
“Get out.”
Roman nodded.
He did not argue.
Before leaving, he pointed to the bedside table.
“Phone.”
She looked.
A new cellphone.
“Security downstairs. Kitchen is through the west hall. No one enters this room without permission.”
He stepped into the hallway.
Then stopped.
“Morgana.”
“What?”
“If you want to leave tomorrow, I’ll arrange transportation anywhere you choose.”
She laughed bitterly.
“Generous.”
“No.”
His voice became quieter.
“Necessary.”
Then he closed the door.
Morgana locked it.
Twice.
For almost ten minutes she stood motionless.
Then she picked up the photograph of her mother.
The cheap wooden frame had traveled through three apartments, two shelters and seventeen years of Jason’s drunken rages.
Morgana touched Elena’s face.
Her thumb brushed the bottom corner.
Something shifted.
Morgana frowned.
The backing felt thicker than it should.
She turned the frame over.
Pulled one metal tab loose.
Then another.
Behind the photograph was a folded strip of paper she had never seen before.
Her mother’s handwriting.
She knew it from birthday cards Jason had not managed to destroy.
Only one sentence.
If Roman Costa ever finds you, ask him what he did with the red key.
Morgana stared at the locked bedroom door.
Then at the note.
Roman had been telling the truth about one thing.
May you like
Her mother had known him.
And whatever happened twenty years ago had apparently begun before Morgana was old enough to remember it.
