Chapter 2 - THE BRASS KEY AND THE BRIDE’S CONFESSIONThe ballroom was completely silent.
Three hundred guests held their breath.
My father’s security team was frozen halfway down the aisle, waiting for a command that never came.
I looked down at the small brass key resting in my palm. It felt heavy. Too heavy for its size.
Then I looked at Victoria.
The woman who had just spent six months planning our future together was trembling. But it wasn’t from shock. It was from guilt.
“How long?” I asked.
My voice was terrifyingly calm.
Victoria took a step back. Her beautiful white gown suddenly looked like a costume.
“Ethan, please. Not here.”
“How long have you known my mother is alive?”
She closed her eyes. A single tear tracked through her perfect makeup.
“Since the day we got engaged,” she whispered.
The words hit me like a physical blow.
Six months.
For six months, we had shared a home. Shared a bed. Talked about having children of our own.
And every single day, she had looked me in the eye knowing my entire life was a lie.
“My father told you?” I asked.
Victoria shook her head. “No. My father did.”
A murmur rippled through the front rows. My father, Richard Whitaker, finally broke out of his shock and stormed down the aisle.
“Ethan, get up!” he hissed, grabbing my shoulder. “This woman is a lunatic. She’s trespassing.”
I shoved his hand away.
I didn’t just push him. I shoved him hard enough that he stumbled into the nearest pew.
“Don’t touch me,” I said.
I turned back to Margaret. The elderly florist was still on her knees amidst the crushed white roses.
“What does this key open?” I asked her.
Margaret’s hands were shaking, but her voice was steady.
“A locker at the Greenwich train station. Number 412. Your mother rented it thirty years ago. She paid the fee a decade in advance, over and over, waiting for the day you were old enough to find it.”
My father’s face went pale. Completely, deathly white.
“Arrest her!” he yelled at the security guards. “Get her out of my sight!”
But I stepped between the guards and Margaret.
“If anyone touches her, I will dismantle this family’s company piece by piece,” I said.
I looked at my father. He knew I meant it. As the COO, I held the keys to his entire empire.
I took off my tuxedo jacket and draped it over Margaret’s trembling shoulders. Then I helped her to her feet.
“We’re leaving,” I said.
Victoria reached out, grabbing my wrist.
“Ethan, wait. You don’t understand why my family agreed to this marriage. My father didn’t just take your mother’s money. He took something else.”
I stared at her hand on my wrist. Then I looked into her desperate eyes.
“What did he take, Victoria?”
She swallowed hard. “He took your sister.”
I stopped breathing.
Victoria reached into the bodice of her wedding dress and pulled out a delicate, tarnished silver locket.
She pressed it into my hand.
“Open it,” she whispered.
My hands shook as I pried the clasp apart. Inside was a tiny, faded photograph of a little girl.
May you like
She had my eyes.
“Her name is Lily,” Victoria said, her voice breaking. “And if you don’t marry me today, my father is going to make sure you never find her.”
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