Chapter 2 - THE KEY THAT SHOULD NOT EXIST
“Give me that key.”
Victoria Whitmore's voice carried across the ballroom.
Niko Moretti looked at her without moving.
“Why?”
“Because it belongs to my family.”
Ava pulled his coat tighter around her shoulders.
“My mother hid it in my dress.”
Victoria's eyes flashed.
“Your mother has been dead for eighteen years, Ava. You have no idea what that object is.”
“Then why do you?”
The question silenced the nearest tables.
For thirteen years, Ava had been taught that questioning Victoria was disrespectful. When she was eleven, asking why Bianca received a new bedroom while Ava moved into the converted laundry room had earned her three days of silence from her father.
When she was sixteen, asking why Eleanor's old sewing machines had been sold brought a lecture about gratitude.
Now three hundred strangers watched her stepmother struggle to answer one simple question.
Victoria recovered.
“It's an old family keepsake.”
Niko opened his hand.
The black rose engraved into the gold looked delicate enough to have been drawn with a needle.
“Interesting,” he said.
Bianca stepped between them.
“This is ridiculous. Ava stole a diamond necklace, and now we're discussing a rusty little key?”
“Gold doesn't rust,” Ava said.
Bianca's cheeks reddened.
Niko turned toward the guard holding Ava's clutch.
“Who instructed you to search her bag?”
The guard looked at Bianca.
“Miss Whitmore.”
“Did you see Miss Monroe put the necklace inside?”
“No, sir.”
“Did anyone?”
“I don't know.”
“Then you have an accusation, not proof.”
Richard Whitmore approached the stage.
“Mr. Moretti, this is a family matter.”
Niko glanced at the torn emerald silk.
“You chose a room with three hundred witnesses.”
Richard stiffened.
Ava had never heard anyone speak to her father that way.
Niko turned to his security director, Matteo Russo, who stood beside the ballroom entrance.
“Preserve the footage from every camera covering the auction office, backstage corridor, and this stage. Nobody deletes anything.”
Bianca's smile vanished.
Victoria stepped forward.
“That footage belongs to the event organizers.”
“The hotel owns the security system.”
“You can't possibly believe this girl's story over ours.”
Niko's expression cooled.
“I haven't heard her story yet.”
He looked at Ava.
“Would you like to tell it somewhere private?”
She looked toward Richard.
Her father avoided her eyes.
For one ridiculous second, she waited for him to apologize.
Instead he said, “Ava, stop embarrassing yourself.”
Something inside her finally went still.
She turned toward Niko.
“Yes.”
***
The private suite on the hotel's forty-second floor was larger than the apartment Ava had once shared with her mother.
A fire burned behind glass.
Beyond the windows, Manhattan glittered beneath a cold November sky.
A woman named Sofia brought Ava a robe, slippers, and a sewing kit.
“Would you like me to repair the dress?”
Ava looked at the torn fabric beneath Niko's coat.
“No. Not yet.”
Sofia nodded and withdrew.
Niko placed the key on the coffee table between them.
Ava stared.
“Where have you seen it before?”
“My father owned one.”
“Lorenzo Moretti?”
He nodded.
Even Ava knew the name.
Lorenzo Moretti had controlled much of New York's waterfront before his death nine years earlier. Newspapers called him a businessman. Federal prosecutors had preferred less flattering descriptions.
“Why would my mother have something belonging to your father?”
“I don't know.”
“Then why did you look frightened when you saw it?”
Niko considered her.
“Because my father told me every black rose key had been destroyed.”
“Why?”
“They opened private storage compartments in a building he owned near the old garment district.”
Ava leaned forward.
“What building?”
“The Bellwether.”
She knew it.
An abandoned department store on West Twenty-Eighth Street, boarded up for years.
“My mother worked there.”
Niko's gaze sharpened.
“When?”
“Before I was born. She designed evening gowns for a company called Bellwether Atelier.”
“Eleanor Monroe.”
“Yes.”
He repeated the name quietly.
“My father mentioned her once.”
Ava's heart accelerated.
“What did he say?”
“That she was the only person in New York brave enough to tell him he was wrong.”
Ava almost smiled.
That sounded like her mother.
Then she remembered the woman Victoria had become whenever Eleanor's name was mentioned.
“Did your father hurt her?”
Niko did not look offended.
“I don't know. But I intend to find out.”
Ava studied his face.
He was handsome in an intimidating, almost severe way. Dark hair, a narrow scar near his right eyebrow, and eyes that gave away little.
She wondered how many people had mistaken his composure for kindness.
“Why help me?”
“Because you were publicly humiliated in my hotel.”
“That explains the coat.”
He waited.
“It doesn't explain the key.”
“No.”
“Then?”
He leaned forward.
“Because someone just tried to take an object my father considered dangerous enough to destroy.”
Ava looked down.
“What if it opens something terrible?”
“Then you decide whether you want to see it.”
She raised her eyes.
“You're not going to take it?”
“No.”
He pushed it toward her.
“It's yours.”
Ava closed her fingers around the gold.
For the first time that night, she felt as though she owned something no one could take away.
Her phone vibrated.
A message from Bianca.
YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'VE DONE. COME HOME BEFORE MOM MAKES THIS WORSE.
Then another.
DAD SAYS YOU'RE FINISHED.
Ava stared at the screen.
Niko noticed.
“Trouble?”
“Nothing new.”
She slipped the phone into her clutch.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Yes.”
“Did your father ever tell you why the keys had black roses?”
Niko stood.
He crossed to an antique cabinet and removed a framed photograph.
Ava looked at the image.
Three people stood outside the Bellwether building.
A younger Lorenzo Moretti.
A man Ava didn't recognize.
And a woman with dark curls, laughing at something beyond the camera.
Ava's throat tightened.
“Mom.”
Niko watched her.
The woman in the photograph was Eleanor Monroe.
On the back, written in elegant handwriting, were four words.
THE ROSE NEVER LIES.
Underneath was a date.
November 14, eighteen years earlier.
Ava felt the room tilt.
That was the day her mother died.
Before she could speak, Matteo knocked and entered.
His expression was grim.
“We found the necklace footage.”
Niko turned.
“And?”
Matteo looked at Ava.
“The necklace was placed in her bag by someone wearing a Whitmore Foundation staff badge.”
“Bianca?”
“No.”
He hesitated.
“Your father.”
Ava stared.
“That's impossible.”
Matteo placed a tablet on the table.
On the screen, Richard Whitmore opened Ava's clutch and slipped something beneath her scarf.
Then he looked directly into the camera.
May you like
And smiled.
---
