Chapter 5 - The Maid Nobody Saw
The trip to Queens took twenty-three minutes.
It felt like twenty-three years.
Lena called her mother seven times.
No answer.
Dmitri drove.
Victor sat beside Lena in the rear seat, saying nothing.
When they reached the apartment building, two patrol cars were already outside.
Lena ran.
“Mom!”
June Hart stood in the hallway wearing slippers and a faded robe, arguing with an officer.
Lena nearly collapsed.
June caught her.
“What happened to your neck?”
“What happened here?”
“The alarm went off. Somebody broke the kitchen window.”
Lena held her tightly.
Victor remained several feet away.
June spotted him.
Her entire body stiffened.
“You.”
Victor looked almost uncomfortable.
“Mrs. Hart.”
“Don’t ‘Mrs. Hart’ me.”
Lena looked between them.
“You know him?”
“I know the man who signed your father’s life away.”
Victor did not defend himself.
June noticed his lip.
“What happened to your face?”
Lena exhaled.
“I punched him.”
June stared at her daughter.
Then at Victor.
Then back.
“For your father?”
“Poison.”
June blinked.
“What?”
The explanation took ten minutes.
June sat at the kitchen table afterward, gripping a mug with both hands.
Police had found no intruder.
Nothing appeared stolen.
That made Lena more afraid.
Someone had wanted them to know the apartment could be entered.
Victor walked toward a bookshelf.
A framed photograph showed Thomas Hart standing between Lena and June at a Coney Island boardwalk.
Victor stared at it.
June noticed.
“You don’t get to look nostalgic.”
“I’m not.”
“Good.”
Victor turned.
“Mrs. Hart, did Thomas keep records from the Grandeur investigation?”
June’s expression closed.
“Why?”
“Because Leon Mercer may have framed him.”
June laughed bitterly.
“May have?”
Lena sat beside her mother.
“Mom.”
June looked at her.
“You found something.”
“We found evidence Leon might be connected to the poisoning.”
June closed her eyes.
When she opened them, her anger had changed into fear.
“He knew.”
“Dad?”
“Thomas knew Leon was stealing.”
Victor stepped closer.
“What exactly did he know?”
June hesitated.
For eight years she had protected her husband’s secrets because nobody powerful had cared when he was alive.
Now the most powerful man connected to them was standing in her kitchen.
“Thomas found invoices,” she said. “Renovation companies billing the Grandeur for work that never happened. He followed the vendors. They all led back to the same holding company.”
“What holding company?”
“Meridian Consulting.”
Victor and Dmitri exchanged a look.
Victor said, “Meridian is one of Romano Holdings’ approved vendors.”
“Exactly.”
June stood.
“Thomas went to Leon. Two days later money appeared in Thomas’s employee account.”
Lena frowned.
“What employee account?”
“A reimbursement account. Six hundred thousand dollars moved through it in three transfers.”
“Dad never told me that.”
“He was ashamed.”
“He didn’t do it.”
“I know.”
June’s voice cracked.
“He spent years trying to prove money can be moved through an account without the owner stealing it. Nobody cared.”
Victor’s face darkened.
“I should have.”
June stared him down.
“Yes.”
No one spoke.
Then June walked to a cabinet beneath the sink and removed an old metal recipe box.
Inside were bills, photographs, expired coupons, and one brass key.
She placed it on the table.
“Thomas gave me this three days before he died.”
Lena picked it up.
A small number was stamped into the metal.
“What does it open?”
“He never told me.”
June swallowed.
“He said if anyone ever came asking about Meridian, I should give this to Lena.”
Victor looked at the key.
“The Grandeur used brass guest keys before the electronic renovation.”
Lena frowned.
“Room 814?”
“That room was converted into storage twelve years ago.”
Dmitri spoke.
“Storage for what?”
Victor’s eyes met Lena’s.
“Old financial archives.”
The kitchen became silent.
Lena closed her fingers around the key.
Her father had worked in accounting.
He had been accused of theft.
He had insisted the real records still existed.
And eight years later, on the same night someone tried to poison Victor Romano, a key to the hotel’s financial archive had surfaced.
June grabbed Lena’s wrist.
“If you go back there, you don’t go alone.”
Victor said, “She won’t.”
June looked at him.
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
Victor almost smiled.
“I assumed not.”
Lena stood.
She had spent years telling herself her father’s scandal was dead history.
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Now she understood Leon Mercer had been watching her because history was not dead at all.
It had simply been waiting behind a locked door.
