Adrian was waiting in his study.
He no longer wore his tuxedo jacket.
For the first time, he looked his age.
Nora entered behind Ethan.
Adrian saw her face.
Then he saw the photograph in Ethan's hand.
And somehow he understood.
"Rebecca Vale," Ethan said.
Adrian closed his eyes.
Nora's stomach dropped.
"You knew my mother."
"Yes."
"How?"
"She worked for me."
"I know that."
"No."
Adrian looked at her.
"She worked for Whitmore Global."
Nora stared.
"My mother was a housekeeper."
"That was what she told you."
Nora laughed once.
It contained no humor.
"You're saying my mother lied to me?"
"I'm saying she protected you."
Adrian opened a drawer.
Inside was an old photograph.
He placed it on the desk.
Nora picked it up.
Her mother stood beside Adrian twenty years younger.
Beside them was Victor Lang.
And Marcus Hale.
They were standing inside an office.
Not a mansion.
Nora's hands began to shake.
"What is this?"
"Your mother was an accountant."
Adrian spoke slowly.
"She discovered the first evidence that Victor was moving company funds through fraudulent accounts."
"Twenty years ago?"
"Yes."
"And you didn't fire him?"
"I didn't know it was Victor."
Nora looked at the photograph again.
"What happened to her?"
Adrian hesitated.
That hesitation frightened Nora more than any answer could.
"She disappeared before she could give me the evidence."
"My mother died in a car accident."
"That is what the police concluded."
Nora stared at him.
"And you didn't believe them?"
"No."
The room became silent.
Ethan looked at his father.
"You never told me any of this."
"I thought it was finished."
Nora felt suddenly sick.
"My mother died because of your company."
Adrian's expression tightened.
"She died because somebody was protecting a criminal enterprise. And I failed to discover who."
"You kept Victor beside you for twenty years."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because until tonight, I never had proof."
Nora backed away from the desk.
She couldn't breathe properly.
Everything she remembered about her childhood rearranged itself in her mind.
Her mother working late.
The unexplained fear during those final weeks.
The argument Nora heard through the bedroom wall the night before she died.
A man's voice.
A sentence she had forgotten for almost twenty years.
You don't understand what they'll do if you talk.
Nora looked at Adrian.
"My mother left something."
"What?"
"I don't know."
She pressed both hands against the desk.
"When I was eight, she gave me a music box. She told me never to throw it away, even if it broke."
Ethan stepped closer.
"Do you still have it?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"My apartment."
The study door opened.
Marcus Hale entered.
Everyone turned.
"What happened?" Marcus asked.
Nobody answered.
His gaze dropped to the photograph.
Then to Nora.
His face changed.
Only for a fraction of a second.
But Nora saw it.
The same way she had seen Celeste look across the ballroom.
Fear.
Marcus recovered quickly.
"Where did you find that?"
Adrian stared at his oldest friend.
Nora suddenly understood.
Victor had not been the man speaking to her mother that night.
She remembered the voice now.
Low.
Calm.
Educated.
The same voice she had heard thousands of times in television interviews beside Adrian Whitmore.
Nora slowly turned toward Marcus.
"You knew my mother."
Marcus smiled.
"I believe we all just established that."
"No."
Nora's voice shook.
"You were at my house the night before she died."
Nobody moved.
Marcus's smile disappeared.
Then somewhere downstairs —
an alarm began to scream.
