Chapter 3 - The Woman in the Hidden Recording|
The recording ended before I could ask another question.
For several seconds, the ballroom remained completely silent.
Then everyone began speaking at once.
The candidates demanded explanations. The guards called for technical assistance. Someone tried the main doors and discovered they had been locked from the outside.
Dante ignored all of them.
He stood beside the platform, staring at the dark screen.
"My father died believing Gabriel abandoned the family," he said quietly.
Alden adjusted his jacket.
"Your father believed whatever protected his position."
Dante turned toward him.
"How long have you known?"
"Since before you were born."
"And you said nothing?"
"I was waiting for the right moment."
"To save the family?"
Alden looked at me.
"To save its future."
I stepped away from both men.
"Stop discussing me as though I'm a document you found in a filing cabinet."
They looked at me.
I hated how quickly the room had changed. Minutes earlier, I had been a maid people could humiliate without consequence. Now strangers watched me as though I might be a princess, a threat, or a valuable piece of property.
I was still Clara Bennett.
I still remembered counting coins for groceries and washing my mother's clothes when she became too weak to stand.
I still remembered the men who collected my father's supposed debt.
"I want to know everything," I said. "And I want the truth without anyone deciding what I can handle."
Dante nodded once.
"Agreed."
Alden snorted.
"You think the truth will set you free? Your father discovered the same thing. He tried to leave this family, and look where it got him."
"Where did it get him?" I demanded.
The adviser said nothing.
Dante looked at the guards.
"Take Alden to the east security room. No one speaks to him without my authorization."
As they escorted him away, Alden leaned toward me.
"Ask your mother why she never told you your father's real name."
His words followed me long after he disappeared.
Dante led me into his private study. I expected him to order me into a chair, but instead he opened the door and waited for me to enter first.
The room smelled of cedar, leather, and the faint smoke of an extinguished fireplace.
I had cleaned it countless times.
I had polished the desk, dusted the bookshelves, and scrubbed a dark stain from the floor near the window.
Now I wondered whose blood it had been.
Dante noticed me looking.
"That stain came from a business dispute three years ago," he said. "I had the floor replaced afterward."
"That isn't reassuring."
"I wasn't trying to reassure you."
At least he was honest.
He opened a locked cabinet and removed a thick leather folder.
Inside were photographs of Gabriel Moretti, records of an old fishing company, and several newspaper clippings about a boating accident off the coast of Maine.
The official report stated that Gabriel and his wife had died when their boat capsized during a storm.
Their daughter had supposedly died with them.
But a second document carried a handwritten note.
Female infant recovered. Identification withheld under emergency protection order.
My hands began shaking.
"I was a baby."
"Apparently."
"Who protected me?"
Dante examined the paper.
"Someone inside the family."
He found another document containing my mother's name and an unfamiliar signature.
The signature belonged to his father.
Beneath it was a payment authorization for a private investigator who had been ordered to locate Gabriel's daughter.
The date was twenty-four years earlier.
The payment had been canceled.
Someone had written across the bottom in red ink:
DO NOT LET THE CHILD RETURN.
Dante stared at it.
"I didn't know any of this existed."
"Would you have believed me if I had told you?"
He considered the question.
"Probably not."
His honesty surprised me more than an apology would have.
A soft knock interrupted us.
A guard entered carrying a small envelope discovered beneath the golden platform.
The envelope bore my mother's handwriting.
Clara Bennett.
Inside was a key and a short note.
If the Black Rose awakens, find the room where your father kept the sea.
I read it twice.
Dante looked toward the tall windows.
"Your father kept the sea?"
I shook my head.
Then I remembered a small wooden box my mother had hidden beneath her bed. It contained a brass compass, a broken watch, and a miniature painting of a lighthouse.
I had brought the box to work that morning because the men collecting my debt had threatened to search my apartment.
The box was in my locker.
I hurried toward the door.
Dante followed.
When we reached the servants' corridor, the locker stood open.
The box was gone.
So was the guard assigned to watch the hallway.
On the floor lay a single black rose.
May you like
And beneath it, written in fresh red ink, were four words.
YOUR MOTHER LIED, CLARA.
