Chapter 3 - The Silent Master
"How did you get those?" I whispered, my heart hammer-forged against my ribs.
Emma stepped into the moonlight filtering through the transom window. "Your mother keeps a duplicate set in the safe inside the sheet-music cabinet. She thinks I don't know the combination, but I watched her dial it three months ago."
She held out the heavy brass key.
"Why are you helping me?" I asked, eyeing her suspiciously. "Your father's car forced mine off the embankment five years ago. The police report said he was drunk."
"My father didn't drink," Emma said, her voice sharp with suppressed pain. "He was your father's chief investigator. He was carrying a briefcase full of trial evidence the night they were summoned to the lake house. He called my mother ten minutes before the crash and told her that if anything happened to him, she should look at the piano scores."
"The scores?"
"Just open the door," she urged softly.
Emma inserted the brass key into the manual override slot beneath the digital keypad. She turned it counterclockwise until a heavy metallic bolt clicked back. She punched in four numbers—1014, my birthday—and the red light flashed green.
The door swung open with a slow, heavy sigh.
The air inside the East Wing was thick with the sterile scent of antiseptic, mixed with the stale odor of locked rooms and old paper. The hallway was dark, save for a narrow sliver of yellow light spilling from beneath the door at the far end.
The low humming had stopped.
I moved down the runner rug, my prosthetic making almost no sound against the thick wool. I pushed open the bedroom door.
The room was vast, furnished not like a hospital ward, but like a luxurious prison. High windows were fitted with subtle iron grilles behind velvet drapes. In the center of the room sat a massive four-poster bed.
Sitting in a wheelchair beside the window was a man.
His hair was entirely snow-white, his frame thin and fragile beneath a heavy tartan blanket. His hands—hands that had once spanned thirteen keys on a piano keyboard with effortless grace—lay flat in his lap, the fingers gnarled and motionless.
"Dad?" I whispered.
The man didn't turn his head immediately. His gaze remained fixed on the dark glass of the window, reflecting the distant moonlight.
I took three steps into the room and fell to my knees beside his chair. The hard impact of my mechanical knee echoed in the quiet room, but I didn't care. I reached out and took his left hand in mine. His skin was paper-thin and ice-cold.
"Dad... it's Julian," I choked out, tears burning behind my eyes. "I came back."
For several seconds, there was no reaction. Then, slowly, painfully, his fingers twitched inside my palm. His head turned toward me with a jerky, uncoordinated movement.
His eyes—once a sharp, piercing hazel—were clouded with cataracts, but as he stared down at my face, a sudden spark of violent recognition flared in his pupils.
His mouth opened, his lower jaw trembling.
"Ju... Ju..." he rasped, his voice sounding like dry leaves blowing across concrete.
"I'm here, Dad. I'm right here."
His right hand, the one that wasn't paralyzed, dragged itself across his lap with agonizing slowness. He reached out and touched my cheek, his thumb tracing the faint scar near my temple. Then, his hand dropped down, sliding over my chest, over my waist, until his fingers felt the hard, unyielding metallic frame of my prosthetic leg through my jeans.
His face contorted in a silent, horrific sob.
"They... told me..." he gasped, his chest heaving as he fought against his damaged vocal cords. "They told me... you burned."
"I didn't burn, Dad," I cried, holding his hand tighter. "I lost my leg, but I survived. They kept me in Vermont. They told me you didn't want to see me!"
My father’s head shook violently from side to side. "No... no... Eleanor... she took... the files..."
"What files, Dad?" I leaned closer, my ear inches from his mouth. "What files did she take?"
He raised his frail right index finger, tapping it repeatedly against his own chest, then pointed directly at the grand piano standing in the corner of his bedroom—a duplicate of the Steinway downstairs, its fallboard locked with an iron padlock.
"The... score..." he whispered, his eyes wide with terror. "Before... she comes..."
Suddenly, the overhead lights in the room clicked on, blinding us in a harsh, ruthless glare.
May you like
My mother stood in the doorway, flanked by two burly security guards in dark uniforms.
"I warned you, Julian," Eleanor said coldly, her arms folded tightly across her chest. "I told you your father was too ill for visitors."
