Chapter 2
Beneath the heavy grain of the carved paneling, a third knock sounded.
It was weaker than the first two—the dull, scraping thud of knuckles dragging against unfinished lath, accompanied by the desperate, muffled scratch of fingernails along the interior baseboard.
Everard stepped past the piano, his polished leather shoes crunching over nothing as the surrounding guests backed away in a ripple of sudden panic. He placed his broad left palm flat against the walnut veneer. Beneath his skin, he could feel the faint, rhythmic shudder of someone pounding on the other side of the concealed partition.
Aurelia surged between Everard and the wall, placing herself squarely in front of the seam. She smoothed the front of her torn composure, forcing a bright, brittle smile that stretched the porcelain skin of her cheeks until her teeth flashed like ivory dice.
"Everard, darling, please," Aurelia said, her voice strained, carrying an artificial, theatrical lilt that failed to mask the tremor in her throat. "The girl has been having night terrors for months. You know Honora left you. She took her passport and cleared out the offshore accounts in April. You know that."
Everard did not reply. His gaze dropped from her eyes to her right hand, tucked half-behind the folds of her emerald gown.
Her fingers were curled into a rigid white knot. Between her thumb and forefinger, the blunt brass tooth of a century-old skeleton key protruded half an inch, glinting under the chandelier light.
Aurelia realized her mistake. Panic cracked through her aristocratic posture. She lunged to the side, reaching out with clawed fingers to drag Minnie off the bench to use the child as a human shield.
Everard moved faster.
His right arm rose like an iron spar, intercepting Aurelia’s outstretched arm mid-swing. With a vicious, pivoting torque of his hips, he spun his sister around, driving her spine hard against the curved rim of the Steinway grand piano. The heavy instrument groans under the impact, strings ringing out in a chaotic, metallic shiver.
Everard pinned Aurelia’s throat against the rim with the crook of his forearm, his face hovering two inches from hers. He didn't speak. He simply stared into her widening pupils with a cold, predatory vacuum that emptied the air straight out of her lungs.
Aurelia’s fingers seized, then involuntarily splayed open.
The brass key slipped from her palm, tumbling through the air before landing with a dull, velvet thud upon the Aubusson carpet.
From the edge of the alcove, Everard’s personal chief of security, a broad-shouldered ex-marine named Keller, stepped forward in a slate-gray suit. The moment Everard released his sister, Keller slammed Aurelia’s arms behind her back, pinning her against the piano with a single, massive hand.
Everard bent down, his overcoat sweeping the floor, and picked up the key.
He slid the brass bit into an invisible mortise hidden behind the carved molding of a wooden acanthus leaf. The lock gave way with a heavy, oiled clack.
Everard caught the lip of the panel and wrenched the secret door outward.
The concealed storage space behind the salon was barely four feet wide—a lightless, airless cavity carved into the mansion’s service spine, smelling of damp limestone, stale bread, and the suffocating coppery reek of human misery.
Curled on a thin wool horse-blanket on the concrete floor sat Honora Vanderley.
Her once-radiant golden hair was matted into dull, tangled knots around her hollow, bruised cheekbones. She wore the same rumpled linen blouse and trousers she had vanished in six months ago, the fabric hanging loose from her skeletal frame. As the brilliant amber light of the music salon flooded the hole, Honora shielded her pale blue eyes with a blistered hand, blinking like a prisoner dragged from a subterranean dungeon.
Minnie let out a piercing, bird-like cry from the bench, launching herself across the hardwood. "Mommy!"
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Everard reached into the dark void. His massive hands slid under Honora’s forearms, lifting her light, trembling body across the threshold into the light.
The eighty reception guests froze, champagne glasses dangling from limp fingers, staring in paralyzed horror at the woman whose funeral mass had been whispered about for half a year.
