Chapter 3
The service elevator still worked.
That annoyed me.
My father trusted mechanical things because electronics could be watched. The brass key opened a hidden control panel behind the penthouse coat closet, and the lift descended three floors below the private garage.
Gavin watched me unlock it.
His face told me he had been there before.
I took Claire with me.
Gavin stayed upstairs under guard.
The underground room looked exactly as I remembered from childhood—concrete walls, steel shelving, one long walnut table, and a locked interior door my father called the Quiet Room.
Claire stopped when she saw it.
“You knew this was here?”
I looked at her.
“You didn’t?”
Her face changed.
There.
Gavin had not told her everything.
Good.
I walked toward the Quiet Room.
The lock had scratches around it.
Recent.
Someone had tried repeatedly to open it.
Claire whispered, “He said there was only money.”
“Gavin says whatever makes people useful.”
That hurt her.
It should.
She crossed her arms. “You don’t get to talk like I’m the only one who betrayed someone.”
I turned.
“No.”
I looked at her carefully.
“Gavin betrayed his wife.”
Pause.
“You betrayed the person who knew you before either of us had money.”
Her eyes filled.
Twenty-two years.
Sleepovers.
Birthdays.
Funerals.
The woman I called before my wedding.
The woman who held my hand when my father died.
She knew exactly which memories would make the betrayal expensive.
I turned back to the door.
“What did Gavin want inside?”
“He never said.”
“Who told him about it?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
I believed she didn’t know the name.
Not that she knew nothing.
“What did he call the person?”
Claire hesitated.
Then:
“The uncle.”
My jaw tightened.
I had three living uncles.
Only one still cared about my father’s old reserve system.
Marco Valenti.
My father’s younger brother.
The man who publicly supported my marriage to Gavin.
The man who told me I needed someone outside the organization to keep me human.
Apparently he had found another use for my husband.
I examined the lock.
No damage deep enough to open it.
So whatever they wanted was still inside.
Then Claire said quietly:
“Gavin said once the room opened, you wouldn’t be able to stay head of the family.”
I turned.
There it was.
May you like
The penthouse was never the prize.
My position was.
