Chapter 6 - Preston Finally Told Me Why He Chose That Exact Moment

By two in the morning, my apartment building looked like a diplomatic compound.

Two black SUVs blocked the curb. One of my father’s men stood in the lobby. Another waited outside my door. I wanted to be angry about it, but after seeing the abandoned phone in the blue room, anger had to compete with common sense.

Nothing inside appeared disturbed.

I crossed the living room, ignored the framed photographs on the mantel, and went directly to the cabinet where I kept things I never used but could not throw away.

The music box sat beneath an old college yearbook.

It was smaller than I remembered, dark walnut with a faded silver moon inlaid on the lid. I had dropped it when I was seventeen, snapping the winding mechanism. The tiny brass key still hung from a ribbon inside.

Adrian stood several feet away. “That key is too small for a door.”

“Safe-deposit box,” I said.

“Or a document case.”

My father had remained near the windows. Vincent was in the hall speaking to his men about the phone found at the house.

I lifted the key.

A number was engraved along the stem.

317.

Michael saw it and went pale.

“You recognize it.”

He nodded slowly. “Lakeview Mercantile Bank. Your mother kept a private box there.”

“Then why didn’t you search it?”

“I did.”

The answer irritated me instantly.

“And?”

“The bank said it had been closed six months before she died.”

I held up the key. “Apparently not.”

Before I could press further, my phone rang.

Preston Hale.

Everyone in the room looked at the screen.

“I asked someone at the hotel for his number,” Adrian said. “I told him you might call. I didn’t expect him to beat you to it.”

I answered on speaker.

“Claire?” Preston sounded sober now. Terrified too.

“Yes.”

“I need to tell you something before my father finds out I called.”

My father’s eyes narrowed.

“Go ahead.”

There was a long breath on the other end. “I got a text before I came over to you tonight.”

I stared at Adrian.

“What did it say?”

“Make a scene at nine-twelve. Keep Carter girl in the center of the room.”

The apartment seemed to lose all sound.

“Who sent it?”

“I don’t know. Unknown number.”

“Why would you obey an anonymous message?”

Preston was silent.

Then he said, “Because it included a picture of me buying pills from a guy outside a club last month.”

My father made a disgusted sound.

Preston rushed on. “I thought it was somebody trying to embarrass me. They said if I made a scene, the picture disappeared. I didn’t know who you were. I swear to God, I didn’t know anyone planned to hurt you.”

The admission did not erase what he had done. It only rearranged it.

“Did they tell you to throw the wine?”

“No.”

I believed that part immediately.

“The message just said keep you there. I did the rest.” His voice cracked. “I know how that sounds.”

“It sounds accurate.”

He swallowed audibly.

“Chase filmed because I told him to. Owen kept saying we should stop. After your father came in, another text arrived.”

“What did it say?”

“Leave through the kitchen. Don’t talk to Hale security.”

“Did you?”

“Yes.”

“Where are Chase and Owen?”

“Chase went home. Owen left with his mother. My father has been trying to reach me for an hour.”

Adrian leaned toward the phone. “Preston, screenshot the messages and email them to me. Do not delete anything.”

Preston hesitated. “Who is that?”

“The man whose jacket Claire is still wearing.”

I looked down. I had forgotten.

Despite everything, a small laugh escaped me. It felt strange and almost disloyal to the fear in the room.

Preston sent the screenshots two minutes later.

The first message arrived at 9:08 p.m.

The second at 9:19.

The threat to my father had been sent at 9:10.

Someone had timed the entire sequence around the public scene.

Adrian enlarged the first screenshot. “There’s an attachment marker.”

Preston had not mentioned it.

I asked him to open the original text again.

“It’s just the photo of me,” he said.

“Scroll.”

He did.

His breathing changed.

“What?”

“There’s a second image. I didn’t notice it.”

He forwarded that too.

It was a photograph of a handwritten ledger page.

At the top was my mother’s name.

At the bottom were two initials.

V.R.

Vincent Russo stood in my hallway ten feet away.

I ended the call before Preston could say more.

My father looked toward the door.

“Bring Vincent in,” he said.

I reached out and stopped him.

“Not yet.”

Michael stared at me.

“If Vincent is involved, confronting him now tells him exactly what we know. If he isn’t, we destroy thirty years of trust over two initials.”

Adrian nodded. “Claire’s right.”

My father clearly hated hearing that sentence from him.

I looked again at the brass key in my hand.

“Tomorrow morning,” I said, “we find out what my mother put in box 317.”

Outside the apartment, Vincent laughed at something one of the guards said.

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The sound used to make me feel safe.

That night, it made me lock my bedroom door.