Chapter 4 – THE VELVET BOX
Gabriel read the words on the back of the child’s drawing over and over again.
Trust the woman with the rose.
“My mother wrote this?” he asked, his voice thick with emotion.
Margaret nodded. “She handed it to me the same night she gave me the velvet box. She told me that if anything ever happened to her, I had to keep the box safe until you were a man.”
Gabriel stood up, pacing the length of the parlor. “Victoria’s father killed my mother because she had proof of his embezzlement from our family. He’s been hunting for that proof for twenty-nine years. But where is the key to the vault?”
I looked at Margaret.
She looked tired, her fragile shoulders slumped under the weight of the evening. But then I noticed it again.
Pinned over her heart, on the faded lavender fabric of her dress, was the small gold brooch.
A brooch shaped exactly like a rose.
“Margaret,” I whispered, stepping closer. “Your pin.”
Gabriel stopped pacing. He looked at me, then at the brooch.
Margaret blinked, her hand coming up to touch the gold petals. “This? Your mother pinned this on me years ago. She said it was a token of gratitude.”
“May I see it, Margie?” Gabriel asked gently.
Margaret unclasped the pin and handed it to him.
Gabriel turned the heavy gold rose over in his palm. He pressed the center of the flower.
With a series of soft metallic clicks, the stem of the rose folded outward, the petals shifting and retracting until the piece of jewelry transformed entirely.
It was no longer a brooch.
It was a long, intricate vault key.
The room fell dead silent.
“She hid it in plain sight,” Gabriel murmured, awe in his voice. “For three decades, you’ve been wearing the key to my family’s legacy over your heart.”
Suddenly, the heavy oak doors of the parlor burst open.
One of Gabriel’s guards rushed in, bleeding from a cut above his eye.
“Mr. Vescari! We have a problem.”
“What is it?” Gabriel demanded.
“It’s not just Victoria,” the guard panted. “Arthur Hale’s men just breached the front gates. There are at least twenty of them. They’ve surrounded the mansion.”
Gabriel’s eyes hardened. He slipped the gold key into his inner pocket and checked his weapon.
“Barricade the doors. Get Margaret into the panic room in the basement.”
“Gabriel,” I said, grabbing his arm. “What about you?”
He looked at me, his cold mafia exterior melting for just a fraction of a second. “I’m going to finish what my mother started.”
Before he could leave, the landline phone on the parlor desk began to ring.
In an age of cell phones, the loud, shrill ringing of the house line felt completely wrong.
Gabriel walked over and picked it up. He put it on speaker.
“Hello, Gabriel,” a smooth, aged voice echoed through the room.
Arthur Hale.
“Arthur,” Gabriel said, his voice deadly calm. “You have ten seconds to get your men off my property before I start sending them back to you in pieces.”
Arthur chuckled. “I don’t want a war, boy. I just want the key. And I think you’ll give it to me.”
“You’re delusional.”
“Am I?” Arthur’s voice dripped with malice. “Ask your pretty little maid, Claire, where her mother is right now.”
My blood ran completely cold.
“What?” I gasped.
“We paid a visit to the Oakridge Care Facility twenty minutes ago, Claire,” Arthur said. “Your mother’s dementia is quite severe, isn’t it? She didn’t even fight when we wheeled her out into the van.”
The floor seemed to drop out from beneath me.
“If you hurt her—” I screamed, tears instantly spilling down my face.
“Bring the key to the abandoned rail yard on 4th Street in exactly one hour,” Arthur interrupted. “Or Claire’s mother forgets how to breathe.”
The line went dead.
Gabriel looked at me.
Then he reached into his pocket, pulled out a heavy silver rosary, and placed it in my shaking hands.
“Take this,” he commanded.
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