Chapter 3 - THE GILDED CAGE
“Stop her!” Victoria’s sharp voice sliced through the dining room.
Before Maria could push through the swinging service door into the pantry, the two estate guards—men in dark grey suits who answered to Victoria, not Richard—stepped in from the service corridor and blocked her path.
Maria shrank back, trapped between the guards and the long banquet table.
Victoria Whitmore-Hayes strolled into the room. At fifty, she looked like she had been carved out of marble and dressed on Fifth Avenue. Her blonde hair was pulled into a severe chignon, and her smile didn’t come anywhere near her cold blue eyes.
“Honestly, Father,” Victoria sighed, tapping a manicured fingernail against her ponsel. “Miller called me from the foyer. He said you were screaming at the help again. First you forget the board meeting in Stamford last Tuesday, and now you’re terrorizing the cleaning girls over dinner?”
Richard slipped the scorched rosary and the brass key into his suit pocket before Victoria could see it. His mind was racing, decades of ruthless survival instincts kicking in all at once.
“I didn’t forget the Stamford meeting,” Richard said, his voice steadying into the cold steel that had built his empire. “You changed the calendar entry on my tablet the night before. And these men don’t have permission to be in my house.”
“They’re here for your safety, Dad,” Victoria said softly, using the patronizing tone she reserved for when servants were listening. She turned her icy gaze toward Maria. “And as for you. What did you take from him? I saw you drop something on the floor.”
Maria looked at Richard, panic trembling on her lips. If she spoke about the rosary, Victoria would hear.
Richard looked at the young woman’s wide brown eyes—eyes that, now that he truly looked at them in the light, held the exact warm amber flecks that had haunted his dreams for half a century.
“She didn’t take anything,” Richard lied smoothly. “She dropped a button from her cuff. And then she ruined my brisket. I was firing her.”
Maria blinked in shock.
Victoria raised an eyebrow, looking from the untouched plate of star-cut carrots to Maria’s tear-stained face. “Firing her? Over a meal? That seems extreme, even for you, Father. Though I suppose it saves me the trouble of reviewing her background check.”
Richard went still. “What about her background check?”
Victoria walked to the table, picked up a linen napkin, and dabbed delicately at a drop of water near Richard’s crystal goblet. “Greg’s firm has been auditing the household payroll. Trying to trim the fat, since you’ve been so generous with your charity lately. Did you know your little maid here has been sending forty percent of her paycheck to an unlicensed nursing home in Providence, Rhode Island, under a fake social security number?”
Maria gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. “No, Miss Victoria, please—my social security number is real! I’m a citizen! The money is just for my aunt’s medicine—”
“Save it,” Victoria snapped. She looked back at Richard, her eyes gleaming with quiet triumph. “You see, Dad? You let anyone into this house. You’re too trusting in your old age. You need Greg and me to manage the estate before someone robs you blind. Now, go upstairs and take your blood pressure pills. I’ll have the guards escort Maria off the property and hand her file to the authorities.”
“No!” Maria cried, stepping forward. “Please, I have an eight-year-old boy! If you call the police over a clerical error on my tax form, I won’t be able to pick him up from the sitter!”
Richard watched his daughter. Victoria didn’t care about payroll audits. Victoria only ever audited people when she was looking for leverage—or when she was cleaning house before a major move.
Why was Victoria suddenly investigating a thirty-two-year-old maid who had scrubbed floors quietly for two years?
Unless Victoria already knew something about Maria.
“Leave her to me,” Richard commanded, stepping toward the head of the table. “I handle my own staff. Take your hounds and go back to the guest wing, Victoria.”
“I’m afraid I have power of attorney over household operations as of four o’clock today,” Victoria said, a thin smile curving her lips. “Dr. Avery signed the preliminary cognitive decline affidavit this afternoon. Greg is filing it with the probate court on Monday morning. Maria leaves tonight.”
The room seemed to tilt. Dr. Avery had been the family physician for fifteen years—a man whose gambling debts Victoria’s husband, Greg, had apparently finally bought out.
Victoria wasn't just trying to take the company anymore. She was locking him in his own mansion.
“Take her out through the service gate,” Victoria told her guards. “Keep her phone until she’s off the grounds.”
One of the guards grabbed Maria’s arm. As she was pulled backward toward the kitchen door, Maria’s terrified gaze locked onto Richard. She knew she couldn't shout the truth in front of Victoria, so she did the only thing she could.
With her free hand, she tapped two fingers against her wrist—right where a watch would sit—and mouthed two words in Spanish before the door swung shut behind her:
El reloj.
The watch.
Richard stood alone with his smiling daughter, his hand buried deep in his pocket, clutching the burnt beads of Clara’s rosary. He didn't argue with Victoria. He didn't shout. Instead, he walked slowly up the grand staircase toward his private study, went straight to the wall safe behind his oil portrait, and spun the dial.
May you like
He pulled out the velvet box containing the broken Patek Philippe pocket watch his father had left him—the only heirloom he had kept in his office safe for thirty years—and when he popped open the gold backing, the faded photograph of Clara that had been glued inside since 1970 was gone.
In its place was a folded yellow pawn shop ticket from Bridgeport, dated three days ago, with a neat note written on the back in his late butler’s handwriting: Mr. Whitmore, they are going to kill the girl just like they tried to kill her grandmother.
