Chapter 2
Audrey Brooks had worked at the Blue Harbor supper club before Victor owned half the city.
She sang there twice a week.
Not professionally enough to make a living.
Beautifully enough to make people stop eating.
Victor met her after a rainstorm, when the power went out and Audrey kept singing beside a candlelit piano.
The song from the music box was hers.
A slow little melody she wrote for no audience.
She called it “Harbor Lights.”
Victor used to ask her to play it when he wanted to pretend he was not already becoming his father.
Audrey saw through him.
That was why she left.
Not dramatically.
Not with a screaming fight.
She simply told him:
“You’re kind to me when the room is quiet. But the room around you is never safe.”
He offered money.
A house.
Protection.
She said:
“That’s not the same as peace.”
Then she vanished from his life.
Eight years later, a foster child stood in his banquet hall holding Audrey’s music box and a note that said:
For our daughter.
Detective Hannah Vale asked Victor:
“Did you know Audrey had a child?”
“No.”
“Did anyone ever contact you about one?”
“No.”
“Could someone in your organization have intercepted contact?”
Victor did not answer quickly.
That silence mattered.
Finally he said:
“Yes.”
Ellie told the child specialist that her mother had died two years earlier.
Pneumonia that turned severe.
No murder.
No mysterious disappearance.
No hidden crime scene.
Just a poor woman getting sicker too fast while trying to keep rent, work, and a child together.
After Audrey died, Ellie entered foster care because no legal father was listed.
The music box stayed with her through two placements.
“My mother said it belonged to my father,” Ellie whispered. “She said if I ever met him, I should play it first.”
“Did she say his name?”
Ellie nodded.
“Victor.”
That was not enough legally.
Not for custody.
Not for paternity.
Not for anything permanent.
But it was enough to begin.
Victor requested DNA testing through the court the next morning.
The judge granted it.
He also ordered Victor not to contact Ellie directly outside approved channels.
May you like
Victor hated the order.
Then obeyed it.
