Chapter 1 - THE NAME EMILY NEVER SAID
Victor Voss ripped the violin from Emily Blackwood’s arms before she understood what he was doing.
“No—please!”
The instrument struck the pearl-marble counter.
Once.
Hard.
The wooden body split along the lower bout.
Emily dropped to her knees beside it.
Voss looked down at the nine-year-old girl as though she were something that had wandered in from the sidewalk.
“Trash belongs outside with the beggars.”
He kicked one broken section away.
Then he pulled several bills from his wallet, crumpled them in one fist, and dropped them near Emily’s knees.
“Buy yourself another piece of junk.”
Emily did not touch the money.
She crawled toward the violin.
Her pale-blue coat dragged across the marble as she pulled the damaged instrument against her chest.
“My mom gave me this.”
Voss’s expression did not change.
“Then your mother had bad taste.”
The Halcyon Grand was preparing for one of its largest annual charity dinners. Staff moved through the lobby carrying floral arrangements and trays of champagne. Two guests near the elevators had stopped to stare.
Nobody intervened.
Emily pressed the cracked body together with both hands.
Something shifted inside.
A corner of deep-burgundy velvet appeared beneath the broken wood.
Voss saw it.
His entire face changed.
He stepped forward.
“Give me the violin.”
Emily recoiled.
“You broke it.”
“Give it to me.”
She pulled the burgundy pouch free.
Voss reached.
Emily twisted away.
“Mom said nobody here could ever see this.”
Voss froze.
Then, so quietly Emily almost missed it, he whispered:
“Laura kept it?”
Emily stopped crying.
She looked at him.
“You know my mom?”
Voss realized too late what he had said.
Footsteps crossed the marble behind him.
Nathan Blackwood had entered through the revolving doors after a board dinner across the street.
He saw his daughter on the floor.
The shattered violin.
The money beside her knees.
Then Voss trying to take the burgundy pouch from her hands.
Nathan crossed the lobby in four strides.
“What are you doing?”
Voss straightened.
“Mr. Blackwood, I didn’t realize—”
Nathan ignored him.
He knelt beside Emily.
“Are you hurt?”
She shook her head.
“He broke Mom’s violin.”
Nathan looked at the instrument.
Laura had played it for twenty-three years.
At their wedding.
In the hospital after Emily was born.
On quiet Sunday mornings when she thought Nathan was still asleep.
Laura had been dead three years.
Nathan stood.
His voice was controlled.
“How do you know my dead wife’s name?”
Voss went pale.
The cracked violin opened another inch.
From the burgundy pouch slipped a small brass hotel key and the edge of an old photograph.
Voss lunged.
“Don’t let him see—”
Nathan caught his arm.
The photograph landed facedown.
Emily picked it up first.
She turned it over.
Laura stood in the Halcyon lobby years earlier, young and smiling, holding the same violin.
Beside her stood Victor Voss.
And behind them, half reflected in a mirrored column, was Nathan’s mother.
Celeste Blackwood.
Emily looked from the picture to Voss.
Nathan looked at the old brass key.
Stamped into it was one number.
B-17.
Victor’s panic deepened.
May you like
Nathan had grown up inside this hotel.
He knew exactly where B-17 was.
