Chapter 3 - THE BLOOD-STAINED BEADS
The weight of the broken rosary in my palm anchored me to the floor, even as the walls of the narrow corridor seemed to tilt. For a decade and a half, I had carried the suffocating grief of a boy who believed his mother had been murdered the same night his father’s car mysteriously plunged off a cliff.
"Where is she?" I demanded, my voice a low, gravelly threat that didn't sound like my own. I grabbed Victoria’s silk-clad wrist, pinning her hand against the brick wall.
Victoria flinched, but her eyes held a defiant, desperate gleam. "Let go of me, you idiot. If my father’s security sees us, we're both dead."
"I don't care about your father," I snapped, tightening my grip just enough to show her I meant it. "You just handed me my mother's bloodstained rosary. A woman I was told died in a house fire fifteen years ago. Where is Aurelia?"
"I don't know exactly where she is," Victoria whispered rapidly, glancing over her shoulder toward the kitchen doors. "But I know she’s alive. My father has been paying a private firm to track her for years. She’s the only witness to what Arthur was really doing before he died. If you blow up my marriage to Nathaniel, my father will lose his leverage over the Sterlings. And if he loses his leverage, he’ll tie up all the loose ends. Starting with her."
A reversal of everything I knew hit me like a freight train. The Kensingtons weren't just ruthless social climbers. They were holding my mother’s existence over the Sterling empire as a trump card. But why would Arthur’s actions matter now?
"What leverage?" I asked, loosening my grip slightly.
"I've said too much," Victoria breathed, pulling her wrist free. She rubbed her skin, looking at me with a mixture of disgust and pity. "Take a payoff, Silas. Disappear tonight. I can wire five million to any account you want by midnight. Go find her yourself and run."
Before I could answer, the heavy double doors at the end of the hall swung open with a violent crash.
Nathaniel stood there, his tuxedo jacket discarded, his tie hanging loose around his neck. His chest heaved as he stared at the two of us standing in the shadows.
Victoria instantly transformed. The terrified woman vanished, replaced by the haughty, victimized fiancée. She rushed toward Nathaniel, throwing her arms around him.
"Nathaniel, thank God," she cried softly. "He cornered me. He was demanding money to keep quiet about these insane lies."
Nathaniel didn't look at her. He gently but firmly peeled her arms off his shoulders. His eyes were locked on me, entirely entirely cold.
"Go back to the party, Victoria," Nathaniel said.
"But—"
"Go back to the party," he repeated, his voice vibrating with an authority I had never heard him use.
Victoria shot me a venomous look, silently warning me with her eyes, before she gathered her silk skirts and hurried back toward the conservatory.
Nathaniel walked slowly down the corridor until he was standing just inches from me. For the first time, I saw the undeniable resemblance between us. We shared the same sharp jawline, the same dark, brooding eyes that Arthur Sterling had passed down to both his legitimate heir and his hidden bastard.
"She’s lying," Nathaniel said quietly. "You weren't asking for money."
"No. I wasn't."
"You said your mother was the woman my father was going to see the night he died," Nathaniel continued, his voice tight. "The police report said he was driving to a solo retreat in Carmel. It said his brakes failed due to mechanical negligence."
"The police report was bought and paid for by Richard Kensington," I replied.
Nathaniel closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, as if fighting off a wave of nausea. When he opened them, the aristocratic polish was gone. "Show me the tuning fork again."
I reached into my pocket and handed him the heavy silver object. Nathaniel turned it over in his hands, his thumb tracing the deep engraving of the lion, the diamond, and the name Aurelia.
"When I was eight," Nathaniel whispered, staring at the silver, "my father told me this tuning fork opened something. He said if he ever went away, I was to find the lock it belonged to."
My heart skipped a beat. "He told me the same thing. But he never told me where the lock was."
"I know where it is," Nathaniel said, looking up at me. "But I could never find the key. Come with me."
He didn't wait for an answer. He turned and walked briskly down the service hallway, leading me away from the noise of the gala, deep into the older, restricted wing of the Sterling Manor.
We arrived at the massive oak doors of Arthur Sterling’s private library, a room that had been sealed like a tomb since his death. Nathaniel bypassed the modern security keypad and reached under the doorframe, retrieving a heavy brass key. He unlocked the door and pushed it open.
The air inside was stale, smelling of old leather, dust, and secrets.
Nathaniel walked straight to the back of the room, to a massive, floor-to-ceiling portrait of his grandfather. He reached behind the heavy gold frame and pressed a hidden latch. The entire portrait swung outward with a heavy mechanical groan, revealing a sleek, steel safe embedded in the stone wall.
But there was no dial. No digital keypad. Just a small, horizontal slit.
"It’s an acoustic lock," Nathaniel said, his voice echoing in the quiet room. "State of the art for twenty years ago. It requires a specific vibrational frequency to disengage."
He handed the silver tuning fork back to me.
"Do it," Nathaniel commanded.
I held the tuning fork. My hands were shaking. I struck the prongs hard against the edge of the heavy oak desk and immediately slotted the vibrating silver into the horizontal slit.
The metal hummed loudly. The frequency resonated through the steel door.
Click.
The heavy steel door popped open a fraction of an inch.
Nathaniel and I stared at each other. Then, together, we pulled the door open.
Inside the dark cavity, there were no stacks of cash. No diamonds. There was only a single, faded manila envelope.
Nathaniel reached in and pulled it out. He opened the flap and tipped the contents onto the desk.
A thick stack of documents slid out, along with a smaller, sealed letter.
I picked up the documents. They were bank transfers. Massive, off-shore accounts funneling tens of millions of dollars out of the Sterling Foundation and into shell companies. The dates aligned perfectly with the months leading up to Arthur’s death.
"Embezzlement," Nathaniel breathed, looking over my shoulder. "Someone was bleeding the company dry."
"Look at the signatures," I pointed to the bottom of the authorization forms.
They weren't signed by Arthur. They were signed by Helena Sterling. Nathaniel’s mother.
Before Nathaniel could process the betrayal of his own mother, I picked up the sealed letter. It was addressed to Aurelia.
I tore it open. It was written in Arthur’s frantic handwriting.
Aurelia, my love. Helena and Richard Kensington have been stealing from the foundation to fund an illegal political syndicate. I have the proof. I am coming to get you and Silas tonight. We are leaving the country. Do not trust Helena. She knows about the boy.
I stopped breathing. Helena knew.
Suddenly, a cold, aristocratic voice echoed from the doorway of the library.
"I always knew you’d find that eventually, Nathaniel. I just didn't expect you to bring the bastard rat into my home to do it."
We both spun around.
May you like
Helena Sterling stood in the doorway, dressed in immaculate mourning black, though her husband had been dead for fifteen years. In her manicured hand, she held a small, suppressed silver handgun.
"Put the papers down, boys," Helena said softly. "Before I finish the job Richard started fifteen years ago."
