Chapter 2 - The Man Behind the Locked Door
Roman kept his gun pointed at the door while Sienna stared at the brass handle. The voice outside had awakened memories she thought she had buried: anonymous calls from blocked numbers, a sealed envelope on her apartment doorstep, and a promise that she could finally stop defending a dead man no one believed. Every conversation had ended with the same assurance. Trust me. Tonight, those two words sounded more threatening than the gunshots still echoing downstairs.
“Identify yourself,” Roman said.
A pause. Then the stranger answered, “Gabriel Vale. Your uncle's legal adviser. We've met at three family dinners, Roman. I'm trying to keep you alive.”
Roman's jaw tightened. Gabriel was a discreet attorney and crisis fixer, the kind of man who remembered everyone’s secrets and had never seemed troubled by carrying them. Six months earlier, when the agency recommended Sienna, Gabriel had personally approved the staff contract. Roman had signed it without a glance. He would remember that signature for a long time.
“If you wanted me alive,” Roman said, “you wouldn't be asking for the photograph before asking whether anyone was hurt.”
“You don't understand what that picture could do.”
“Then explain it through the door.”
Instead of answering, Gabriel stepped away. Shoes crossed the hallway and disappeared into the sound of the storm. Roman moved toward the lock, but Sienna caught his sleeve. “He's baiting us. Please.” It was the first time she had asked rather than challenged him. Roman stopped. A moment later, David Kowalski, his security chief, called from the opposite end of the corridor and gave the prearranged password. Only after Roman verified his voice did they open the study.
David entered carrying a radio and a fresh cut above one eyebrow. “Three shooters are down. One of our men is injured, but he's conscious. There's a fourth accomplice unaccounted for. The east gate was opened with an authorized staff code.” His gaze moved to Sienna. “We need to secure the witness.”
“The witness has a name,” she said, exhausted by men discussing her as though she were furniture. “And Gabriel Vale was standing outside that door thirty seconds ago.”
David swore under his breath. He radioed the gatehouse, then turned back with a grim expression. “Vale signed out just before dinner. His car is gone.”
“Then the logs are wrong,” Roman said. “Find out who changed them.”
The next hour exposed a household that was far less secure than Roman had imagined. Cameras covering the pantry had been turned toward a blank wall. A service elevator had been disabled. Two officers hired for the fundraiser claimed they were told to leave their normal posts by a message appearing to come from David. Someone had prepared the mansion like a theater, directing everyone to stand in the wrong place before the curtain rose.
Sienna waited in the study while an emergency physician examined the injured guard downstairs. She expected Roman to have her locked in a guest room. Instead, he returned carrying two bottles of water and placed one in front of her. The gesture was so ordinary that she nearly cried. She hated herself for nearly crying. Her father had spent years teaching her that kindness was not evidence of innocence.
“Start at the beginning,” Roman said, sitting opposite her. “Don't protect me. Don't protect yourself. Tell me what you know.”
She told him about the anonymous recruiter and the coded messages delivered through a rented mailbox. She admitted she had searched his mother's former sitting room, photographed several old invoices, and hidden a miniature recorder in the staff office for one night before realizing it captured only housekeepers discussing schedules. She confessed the shameful part: she had wanted to hate Roman. It would have been easier if the handsome man at the head of the table had looked like the villain in her imagination.
“My father didn't die with twenty million dollars,” she said. “He died with twenty-seven dollars in his wallet and a photograph of me from high school. But your family let the papers call him a thief. My mother couldn't afford to fight. She died two years later still hearing strangers whisper his name.”
Roman absorbed her words without interrupting. “My uncle Marcus handled the investigation,” he said finally. “I was twenty-seven and had just buried my father. I thought the financial records spoke for themselves.”
“Records speak with whoever controls them.”
“That's becoming painfully clear.”
He asked to see the photograph. Sienna hesitated before handing it over. Roman traced his mother's face without touching the paper. Elena Castellion had been a sharp, elegant woman with a gift for spotting the fear beneath someone's anger. She had died months after Michael Brooks, the doctors calling it a sudden cardiac event. Roman had been ashamed of the relief he'd felt when the last funeral was over. He could not bear another room full of flowers and condolences.
“What did my mother know?” he asked.
“I found a meeting listed in Dad's calendar: E.C., Pier 17, eleven a.m. That's the day this was taken. He wrote 'second set' beside it.”
“Second set of what?”
“I think accounts. A duplicate record, something that couldn't be rewritten after he died.”
David knocked with news that sharpened the fear between them. Gabriel's mobile phone had been recovered in an empty car three blocks from the estate. The phone was wiped, but the seat contained a sheet of hotel stationery folded into quarters. Written across it was a message: THE GIRL HAS THE KEY. REMOVE HER BEFORE MIDNIGHT.
David had brought the note because it was addressed to Roman's uncle, Marcus, in Gabriel's handwriting. Marcus had been scheduled to attend dinner but canceled an hour before the attack, citing a migraine. Roman stared at the note, unwilling to accept its simplest meaning. Uncle Marcus had walked him through his father's funeral. He had kept the business afloat when Roman wanted nothing to do with it. He was family, and family was supposed to be the last thing you questioned.
Sienna saw the conflict and did not take advantage of it. “We don't know who received that message,” she said. “Gabriel might want us to believe Marcus ordered it.”
Roman looked up. “You would give my uncle the benefit of the doubt?”
“I want evidence. The truth has cost my family enough without us guessing.”
At two in the morning, David located the first person who might provide that evidence: a former Castellion bookkeeper who had vanished shortly after Michael's funeral. She was living in a seaside retirement home under her maiden name. When Roman called, she answered on the third ring. He introduced himself, and a cup broke audibly at the other end.
“Please tell me Gabriel hasn't found the girl,” the woman whispered.
May you like
Roman looked at Sienna. “Why would he be looking for her?”
“Because,” the bookkeeper said, “Michael didn't take that money. He took the only proof of where it went. And the people who stole it have been waiting five years for his daughter to lead them back to it.”
