Chapter 2
I ended the dinner.
No announcement.
No explanation.
Guests were escorted into the west drawing room while my men secured the house.
Maya stayed with Bruno.
Victoria stayed with me.
Elias too.
I placed the brass key on my father’s old desk.
“Talk.”
Elias looked at Victoria.
I almost smiled.
Everyone tonight seemed determined to confess through their eyes.
Victoria folded her arms.
“It could open anything.”
“No.”
My father had marked only three personal locks with that symbol.
His private study drawer.
The wine-cellar cabinet.
And an old door beneath the lake house.
I had checked all three after his death.
None used this key.
Then Maya spoke quietly.
“There’s another mark.”
I looked at her.
She pointed at the key.
One side was worn.
I turned it.
A tiny letter.
B.
Bruno.
My father had labeled it with the dog’s initial.
Not the lock.
The hiding place.
Clever old bastard.
“What exactly happened?”
Maya told me.
That afternoon, Bruno returned from the garden without his collar sitting correctly.
She removed it to fix the buckle.
The seam opened.
She saw metal.
Before she could pull it free, Victoria entered the service room.
Asked what she had found.
Maya said nothing.
Then Elias came in.
Together, they took the collar.
Searched it.
Could not find the key because Bruno became agitated and Maya grabbed the collar back.
Then they tied Maya’s hands to a support pipe inside the old linen room.
Not to torture.
To keep her there until after dinner.
Enough.
Too much.
“How did you get out?”
Maya looked at Bruno.
“He followed me.”
The old shepherd had scratched at the door until a junior maid opened the corridor.
Then he found Maya.
Chewed through the rope.
That explained the bandages.
Not teeth against skin.
Rope fibers cutting both wrists while she pulled free.
Then she came directly to dinner because Victoria had told staff Bruno had attacked someone and needed to be removed.
Of course.
Remove the dog.
Recover the collar.
Control the key.
I looked at Victoria.
“You planned to have Bruno taken away before I saw him.”
“He’s old.”
Wrong answer.
“He freed the woman you tied up.”
Silence.
Then Elias said:
“Your father should have destroyed that key.”
Finally.
“What does it open?”
May you like
My cousin looked at me.
“The room he never told you existed.”
