Chapter 9 - The Secret Beneath the Stage
Margaret Greaves emerged from the compartment.
Elena nearly missed the next note.
Margaret raised one finger to her lips.
She had entered through an old tunnel connecting Blackthorn’s original service road to the theater basement.
Dante understood immediately.
He moved toward Claire while Elena resumed playing loudly enough to mask his footsteps.
Margaret crawled beneath the stage and reached the pressure mechanism.
Victor was watching through cameras.
But the concerto gave them cover.
Elena played.
Her father’s music became a weapon.
Dante reached Claire.
Margaret disconnected one wire.
Then another.
The red indicator went dark.
Dante pulled Claire away.
“Now!” Margaret shouted.
Police stormed the entrances.
Victor’s men appeared from the balcony.
Chaos erupted.
Elena dropped behind the piano.
Dante covered her.
Ruiz’s officers secured the stage.
Victor fled through a rear passage.
Margaret knew where it led.
They followed.
The tunnel ended beneath an abandoned warehouse.
Victor’s car was gone.
But he had left something.
A steel briefcase.
Inside were passports.
Cash.
And photographs of Elena.
Hundreds.
School photographs.
College.
Her first apartment.
Her father’s funeral.
Elena felt sick.
“He watched me.”
Claire looked devastated.
“He wanted to know whether Arthur told you anything.”
“I didn’t know anything.”
“That’s why you stayed alive,” Margaret said.
One photograph was recent.
Elena entering Blackthorn Manor for her job interview.
On the back Victor had written:
SHE HAS HIS HANDS.
Dante took it away.
“You don’t need to look at that.”
“Yes, I do.”
She took it back.
For once she would look directly at the thing that frightened her.
Ruiz found another clue in Victor’s briefcase.
A property deed for a private airfield.
Victor was preparing to leave the country.
Police surrounded it before dawn.
But Victor never arrived.
His private jet remained untouched.
“He knows we know,” Ruiz said.
“So where would he go?” Elena asked.
Claire answered.
“Somewhere Arthur mattered.”
The theater?
Too obvious.
Blackthorn?
Already searched.
Then Elena remembered her father’s ruined upright piano.
It had remained in storage after his death.
Arthur had once told her:
If I ever disappear, Ellie, go where you first learned to listen.
The apartment.
It had been condemned years ago, but the building still stood.
Dante drove her there with Ruiz close behind.
Elena climbed the narrow staircase.
Apartment 4C.
The door was open.
Inside, dust covered everything.
The piano remained against the wall.
Someone had recently wiped the keys clean.
Elena approached.
One key was depressed.
B.
She pressed it.
A panel inside the piano released.
Another envelope.
This one was addressed to Salvatore.
Dante opened it.
Sal,
If Victor finds out Claire survived, he will come for Elena.
You promised me once that blood did not make brothers.
Choices did.
If I don’t make it home, protect my daughter.
—Arthur.
Dante sat down.
“My father knew.”
“He promised.”
“And he failed.”
Claire shook her head.
“Maybe not.”
She explained that after Arthur died, anonymous money had paid Elena’s school tuition.
Elena had assumed it came from a scholarship fund.
Dante checked records.
Salvatore Moretti had created the fund.
He had watched over Elena from a distance.
Not perfectly.
Not openly.
But he had kept Arthur’s promise.
Dante looked at her.
“My father protected you.”
Elena smiled faintly.
“Looks like our fathers were better friends than their children.”
“We’re improving.”
A floorboard creaked behind them.
Dante turned.
Victor Calder stood in the doorway.
May you like
He held a pistol.
And this time there were no police between them.
