Chapter 3 - The Music Box
The torn photograph trembled in my hand. Leave, or share her fate.
The silence of my small bedroom suddenly felt suffocating, as if the walls were closing in to trap me. The official story of Victoria Sterling’s death had been printed in every major newspaper in the country three years ago: a tragic, sudden heart failure while vacationing alone in the Hamptons. A young mother taken too soon by natural causes.
But natural causes didn't send death threats.
A sharp knock at my door made me jump, stifling a scream. I shoved the torn photograph into the pocket of my uniform apron, my heart hammering against my ribs.
"Emma. It's Alexander."
His voice was low, carrying a weight that hadn't been there in the ballroom.
I smoothed my apron, forced my breathing to steady, and opened the door. Alexander stood in the narrow servants' corridor. He had discarded his tuxedo jacket and untied his bowtie. Without the armor of his formal wear, he looked incredibly vulnerable, almost broken.
He looked past me, his eyes instantly registering the state of my room—the open suitcase, the clothes on the bed, the open notebook.
His jaw tightened. "My mother did this, didn't she? She sent someone to search your room."
"Mr. Sterling, I—"
"Alexander," he interrupted gently. "Please. After what happened tonight, I think we can drop the formalities." He stepped into the room, closing the door softly behind him. The space was entirely too small for a man of his presence. "Tell me the truth, Emma. Why were you really leaving? Because I know it wasn't just 'time to move on.' Noah doesn't trust anyone, yet he chose you over women he's been groomed to accept since birth. You love him."
"Of course I love him," I whispered, the admission slipping out before I could stop it. I looked down at my hands. "But love isn't enough when you're going against people who can crush you without leaving a fingerprint."
Alexander closed his eyes. A muscle feathered in his jaw. "The phone call. The audit on your sister's medical debts. Am I right?"
My head snapped up. "How did you know?"
"Because it’s exactly what my mother did to Victoria," Alexander said, his voice laced with a bitter, ancient grief.
I stared at him, stunned. "Victoria... your wife? But the papers said she died of heart failure."
"The papers printed what my mother’s public relations firm paid them to print," Alexander said, moving to the small window and looking out into the dark grounds. "Victoria didn't die of an illness. She died in a car crash on a wet, winding road in the Hamptons. She was driving ninety miles an hour in a rainstorm. She was running away."
"Running from what?"
Alexander turned back to me, the pain in his eyes so raw I wanted to look away. "From me. Or at least, that’s what I thought. We had fought that night. My mother had convinced me Victoria was unstable, that she was unfit to raise Noah. Eleanor threatened to have Victoria committed and take custody away if Victoria didn't sign a post-nuptial agreement giving up all her rights. Victoria packed a bag and fled in the middle of the night. The police said she lost control on a curve. The car burned."
He ran a hand through his dark hair. "I’ve spent three years blaming myself. I thought I drove my wife to her death. That’s why I let my mother run the selection ceremony today. I thought I was too toxic, too broken to choose a mother for Noah myself."
I reached into my pocket. My fingers brushed the jagged edge of the torn photograph. I had to show him. I had to tell him that Victoria’s death wasn't an accident.
Before I could pull the photo out, the door handle turned.
We both jumped as the door pushed open.
Noah stood in the hallway, wearing his little blue pajamas, clutching Bunny by one ear. His eyes were red and puffy.
"Noah?" Alexander stepped forward, immediately dropping to one knee. "Buddy, what are you doing out of bed? You should be sleeping."
Noah sniffled and walked right past his billionaire father, coming straight to me. He held out his other hand.
In his small palm rested a heavy, intricately carved wooden music box. It was beautiful, but the small brass latch on the front was broken.
"I couldn't sleep," Noah whispered, his voice trembling. "I wanted to hear Mommy’s song. But Grandma took the key a long time ago. She said the music was bad."
Alexander’s face hardened at the mention of his mother’s cruelty. "Noah, I can get it fixed—"
"It doesn't matter," Noah said, looking up at me with huge, trusting eyes. "Mommy told me a secret before she went to heaven. She said if I ever got really, really scared, I should open the bottom."
Noah turned the music box over. He pressed a tiny knot in the carved wood.
There was a soft click. A false bottom slid open.
Alexander and I both froze.
Tucked inside the hidden compartment was a piece of heavy, glossy paper.
Noah pulled it out and handed it to me. "She said this would keep me safe."
I took the paper with trembling hands. I didn't need to turn it over to know what it was. I reached into my apron pocket and pulled out the piece that had been left on my pillow.
I placed the two halves together on my small nightstand.
They matched perfectly.
The torn edge aligned flawlessly. It was the other half of the photograph. But as the full image came together, the breath left my lungs in a sharp gasp.
In my half, Victoria was smiling, wearing a pearl bracelet.
But in Noah’s half, the perspective widened. You could see the mirror behind Victoria's hospital bed. And caught in the reflection of that mirror was another woman, standing in the doorway of the hospital room, glaring at Victoria with an expression of pure, unadulterated hatred.
Alexander stared at the complete photograph, the blood draining completely from his face.
It wasn't his mother in the reflection.
It was Vanessa Caldwell. The woman who had been furious about not being chosen in the ballroom tonight.
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"Why was Vanessa in my wife's hospital room the day Noah was born?" Alexander whispered, his voice shaking with a terrifying, dawning realization. "They didn't even know each other."
Before either of us could process the shock, the heavy, unmistakable sound of police sirens began wailing in the distance, growing rapidly louder as they sped up the private driveway of Sterling House.
