❤️ BECAUSE IT WAS YOU

Chapter 02 - The Woman in the Photograph

Cindy woke at 5:38 in the morning with her cheek pressed against expensive wool and Andrew Carter’s heartbeat beneath her ear.

For several seconds, she had no idea where she was.

Then pain returned in pieces.

Her temple throbbed. Her shoulder burned where David had grabbed her blouse. Her ribs hurt when she breathed too deeply. The scent of cedar and rain clung to the jacket wrapped around her, and beneath it was something unmistakably Andrew: soap, coffee, and the faint trace of smoke from places respectable people pretended did not exist.

She opened her eyes.

Andrew was still sitting upright on the sofa.

He had not slept.

His head rested against the back cushion, but his eyes were open and fixed on the windows. His right arm remained around her shoulders exactly where it had been hours earlier.

“You can move,” Cindy murmured.

His gaze dropped immediately.

“So can you.”

“Everything hurts.”

“That’s different.”

Despite herself, she almost smiled.

It vanished when she remembered the message.

Andrew noticed.

He always noticed.

The phone lay on the coffee table beside the untouched water. Its screen was dark now, but Cindy could still see the words.

Ask Andrew what his father did to your mother.

She pushed herself upright and tucked the jacket more tightly around her.

“Who was Elaine Stone to your family?”

Andrew stood.

Not to escape the question. Cindy knew him well enough to see the opposite. He was buying himself room to answer it correctly.

He walked to the kitchen, poured coffee, then stopped with one hand on the counter.

“My father kept records on everyone who worked closely with him.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

“No.”

Andrew turned.

In the pale light before sunrise, he looked older than thirty-eight. Not weaker. Just less protected by the sharp clothes and colder expressions he wore at the office.

“I remember seeing her name in one of his files when I was nineteen.”

Cindy’s throat tightened.

“My mother was a bookkeeper.”

“I know.”

“How?”

“Because she worked for Carter Maritime.”

Cindy stared at him.

Carter Maritime had been Andrew’s father’s company before it became Carter Logistics. She knew the corporate history. Anyone who worked in the executive offices did.

Her mother had never mentioned it.

Then again, Elaine Stone had not lived long enough to explain much of anything.

She died in a car accident outside Columbus, Ohio, when Cindy was nine. Cindy remembered rain on the funeral home windows, her father staring at the floor, and her grandmother squeezing her hand until their fingers hurt.

She remembered almost nothing about the weeks before the accident.

“Why would my mother work for your father in New York when we lived in Ohio?”

Andrew’s expression tightened.

“I don’t know.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“I expect you to believe I would tell you if I did.”

Cindy laughed once, without humor.

“That’s convenient.”

Andrew accepted it without flinching.

“Probably.”

The honesty made her angrier.

She stood too quickly and the room tilted.

Andrew moved toward her.

Cindy raised one hand.

He stopped.

Something passed through his face and disappeared before she could name it.

“I need my purse,” she said.

“It’s here.”

Andrew crossed to a console table and handed it to her.

The leather was scratched. One strap had been torn loose where David had ripped it away from her.

Cindy sat again and began pulling out the contents.

Wallet. Lip balm. Work badge. Receipts. A pharmacy bottle. Two pens. A small packet of tissues.

Andrew watched quietly.

“What are you looking for?”

“My apartment key.”

“I can replace the locks.”

“Not that key.”

Cindy emptied the remaining contents onto the cushion.

Nothing.

Her pulse quickened.

“David kept asking me where it was.”

Andrew’s voice changed.

“Where what was?”

“I didn’t know.”

She looked up at him.

“He broke into my apartment before I got home. He had drawers open, the closet emptied, everything on the floor. I thought he was drunk. Then he kept saying, ‘Give me the key.’”

“What key?”

“I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about.”

“And did you?”

Cindy hesitated.

Andrew’s face went still.

That expression frightened most people. Cindy had seen it silence boardrooms.

She reached beneath the collar of her blouse.

A fine gold chain disappeared beneath the torn silk.

At the end of it hung a small brass key.

Andrew stared.

“My grandmother gave it to me the year before she died,” Cindy said. “She told me it belonged to my mother. I thought it opened some old jewelry box that got lost.”

“David knew about it?”

“No.”

“Did he ever see you wear it?”

“I keep it under my clothes.”

Andrew stepped closer.

“May I?”

Cindy lifted the chain over her head and placed the key in his palm.

He turned it beneath the light.

Stamped along one side were four characters.

B-417.

Andrew’s eyes hardened.

“What?” Cindy asked.

“This isn’t a jewelry key.”

“How can you tell?”

“Because my father used the same bank.”

The room suddenly felt colder.

Cindy turned the key over between her fingers. She remembered her grandmother pressing it into her palm at nineteen, six months before a stroke took most of the old woman’s speech. ‘Your mother kept this close,’ Grandma had said. ‘So should you.’ Cindy had assumed it was sentiment. She wore it through college exams, job interviews, and the first day at Carter Logistics because it felt like carrying a small piece of Elaine with her.

David had once noticed the chain while they were getting ready for dinner. He asked what hung from it. Cindy told him it was nothing important and tucked it beneath her blouse. At the time, his curiosity had seemed casual. Now she wondered how many casual questions had not been casual at all.

Andrew walked to the windows and made a call.

He did not introduce himself.

“Wake Martin.”

A pause.

“I don’t care what time it is. Tell him I need access records for Manhattan Federal Trust, old private-box division. Box B-417.”

He hung up.

Cindy stared at him.

“You have people who can get bank records at six in the morning?”

“Yes.”

“Of course you do.”

He almost smiled.

It was gone before it fully formed.

By seven, Lucas arrived carrying a paper bag of clothes and a cardboard tray of coffee.

He looked at Cindy’s bruised face, then at Andrew.

“You look terrible,” he told Andrew.

Cindy blinked.

Andrew took the coffee.

“Did you get anything from David?”

Lucas’s humor disappeared.

“Not much. He claims a man paid him twenty thousand dollars to get a key from Cindy.”

“Name?”

“He says he never got one.”

“Description?”

“Male. Sixties. Gray hair. Walks with a cane.”

Andrew and Cindy exchanged a glance.

Neither knew what it meant.

Lucas set a second coffee near Cindy.

“He also said something else.”

“What?” she asked.

Lucas looked at Andrew first.

“He said the man knew where Cindy worked. Knew her schedule. Knew she’d broken up with David. Knew enough to tell David which nights she usually got home alone.”

Cindy’s fingers went numb around the cup.

“That information isn’t public,” she said.

“No,” Lucas replied.

Andrew’s face became unreadable.

“It came from inside Carter Logistics.”

Lucas left them alone for ten minutes to coordinate security. Cindy used the quiet to drink half her coffee, though it had already gone cold. Andrew stood at the kitchen counter pretending to read messages.

‘You can sit down,’ she said.

‘I’m fine.’

‘You say that whenever you’re not fine.’

He looked at her. ‘So do you.’

Cindy had no answer. It annoyed her that three years of working side by side had given both of them enough evidence to recognize each other’s lies about being fine.

At 8:13, Andrew’s phone rang.

He listened for less than a minute.

When he ended the call, he placed the brass key carefully on the marble table.

“B-417 belonged to Elaine Stone.”

Cindy closed her eyes.

Of course it did.

“When was it opened last?” Lucas asked.

“Seventeen years ago.”

Cindy looked up.

“That’s impossible.”

Her mother had died seventeen years ago.

Andrew’s gaze stayed on her.