Chapter 3 - THE KEY TO THE WEST WING
The brass key was cold against my skin.
It carried the faint scent of cedar and expensive scotch.
I stood up slowly from the tile floor.
My knees ached from hours of scrubbing.
My scalp felt light on one side where the blunt scissors had sheared away my life.
Go, Julian repeated.
He didn't look at me again.
He turned his back and walked toward the glass doors.
His silhouette vanished into the long shadows of the lawn.
I didn't go back to the servants' quarters in the basement.
I didn't go to the laundry room where Rosa and the others whispered in the dark.
I walked up the grand staircase.
My footsteps made no sound on the thick Persian runner.
The west wing was a forbidden zone.
For seven years, the maids had whispered stories about it.
They said Julian kept his dead first wife's body in there.
They said it was a vault filled with stolen bonds and smuggled gold.
They said anyone who entered without permission disappeared into the harbor before dawn.
I reached the heavy mahogany double doors at the end of the second-floor corridor.
The brass key slid into the lock with a satisfying, oiled click.
The door swung inward.
It didn't lead to a haunted tomb.
It led to a massive, wood-paneled library.
Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined the walls.
A leather armchair sat beside a cold stone fireplace.
And on the massive oak desk in the center of the room sat a single manila folder.
My name was written across the tab in crisp black ink.
Nadia Vance.
Not Nadia Miller.
Not the orphan girl from Pell Street.
Nadia Vance.
My breath caught in my throat.
I walked across the Persian rug and picked up the folder.
The pages inside told a story I had spent my whole life trying to forget.
Twenty-four years ago, a garment factory fire on Pell Street killed twelve workers.
One of them was my mother.
The official report called it an electrical fault.
A tragic accident of old wiring and frayed cotton.
The documents in Julian's folder told a different truth.
The fire wasn't an accident.
It was arson.
Ordered by Arthur Merrill — Clarissa’s father.
He wanted the land to build a luxury high-rise.
The workers locked inside were disposable collateral.
And the man who investigated the fire, the prosecutor who buried the evidence, and the detective who took the bribe —
All of them were currently on Julian Vance’s payroll.
Or had already been ruined by him.
I stared at the black-and-white photographs of the burned workshop.
I saw the chipped basin.
I saw my mother's sewing machine melted into a lump of iron.
And right beside it, a photograph of a ten-year-old Clarissa smiling on a yacht with her father.
The door behind me clicked open.
Julian walked in.
He had removed his suit jacket.
His white shirt sleeves were rolled up to his forearms, revealing the pale, jagged scars across his wrists.
You found it, he said.
He didn't sound surprised.
He walked over to a crystal decanter on the sideboard and poured two fingers of amber liquid.
I didn't steal it, I whispered.
You gave me the key.
I gave you what was yours, Julian corrected.
He handed me the glass of scotch.
My fingers brushed his.
His skin was warm, a sharp contrast to the ice in his eyes.
Clarissa thinks she won because she humiliated you today, he continued.
She thinks her father's money makes her untouchable.
She doesn't know that I bought her father's debt three weeks ago.
Every share, every mortgage, every offshore account.
He took a slow sip of his drink.
By tomorrow afternoon, Arthur Merrill will be bankrupt.
And Clarissa will find out what it means to have nothing.
Why? I asked.
The question hung in the quiet air between us.
Why help me?
Why keep me here for seven years as a maid while you watched her treat me like dirt?
Julian set his glass down on the desk.
He stepped closer.
Close enough that I could smell his cedar cologne mixed with rain.
Because I needed her to show her true colors in front of the one man who could destroy her, he said softly.
And because seven years ago, on the night of the fire, I stood across the street on Pell Street.
I watched a little girl walk out of that smoke carrying a chipped porcelain bowl and a pair of broken scissors.
I promised myself I would find her again.
And when I did, I would make sure the people responsible paid for every single strand of hair they forced her to cut.
My heart hammered against my ribs.
Not with fear.
With a cold, electric fury.
What do we do next? I asked.
Julian smiled.
May you like
A dangerous, predatory curve of his lips.
We let her make her first move.
