Chapter 14 - The Music Box
Rebecca found the auction records.
The music box had been sold to an antique dealer named Harold Weiss.
Harold sold it four years later.
To Nolan Pierce.
I stared at the document.
“Nolan knew.”
Dante nodded.
“That is why he stayed with you.”
Nolan had not only been watching me.
He had been searching through my childhood.
Every birthday gift.
Every box.
Every photograph.
Every memory.
My relationship had been a burglary disguised as love.
We found Nolan at his apartment.
He had returned there after Victor’s video.
Dante’s men surrounded the building.
I insisted on going upstairs.
Nolan stood in the living room holding the music box.
He looked exhausted.
“Emily.”
“Put it down.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand enough.”
His eyes filled.
“Victor is going to kill me.”
“That stopped being my responsibility.”
He flinched.
Good.
For once, the truth hurt him.
“I loved you.”
“No.”
I stepped closer.
“You loved having power over me.”
He looked toward Dante.
“He’ll hurt you too.”
Dante said nothing.
I answered.
“Maybe.”
Then I realized something important.
“I’m still allowed to choose.”
Nolan’s face changed.
That was what he could never tolerate.
Choice.
He grabbed the music box.
“I can trade this for my life.”
Dante’s men moved.
Nolan pulled a gun.
He pointed it at me.
Dante stepped forward.
“Don’t.”
Nolan laughed shakily.
“She ruined everything.”
“No.”
Dante’s voice stayed calm.
“You did.”
Nolan’s hand trembled.
I recognized that expression.
The same one he wore before every explosion.
Except I wasn’t trapped in an apartment anymore.
I looked straight at him.
“You don’t scare me enough to control me anymore.”
His face broke.
The gun lowered slightly.
That was all Dante needed.
He moved.
The weapon hit the floor.
Nolan was restrained in seconds.
I picked up the music box.
Inside was a hidden compartment.
A tiny memory card rested beneath the mechanism.
Anna inserted it into the computer.
Account keys filled the screen.
Then Rebecca noticed another file.
A recording made by Nolan three weeks earlier.
He had secretly taped Victor.
Victor’s voice said clearly.
“Once Moretti gets the girl, kill them both.”
Nolan stared at us.
He had finally discovered what my father learned seventeen years earlier.
Victor Hale never left witnesses.
May you like
And tonight, every person connected to the truth was walking into the same trap.
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