The Music Box Key
Chapter 09 - The Music Box Key
In the dark, Lorenzo found Vivian by sound.
Not her voice. She made no noise. It was the slight catch of her breath when the lights died, the faint shift of silk beneath wool, the way his body had learned hers before his pride admitted it had. He moved toward her and stopped a foot away.
“Vivian.”
“I’m here.”
The steadiness in her voice steadied him.
Gabriel’s flashlight cut across the cellar a second later, hard white light over stone, barrels, faces. Charles Wren had ducked beneath the table. Agent Vale had drawn her weapon. One of her men was shouting into a dead radio.
The intercom crackled.
Rocco laughed softly.
“You always did collect dramatic women, Lorenzo. Your mother. Lucia. Now Vivian. They make such brave messes.”
Lorenzo looked toward the ceiling speaker.
“Come down and say that.”
“At my age? Stairs are for younger fools.”
Vivian stepped toward the table and closed her fingers around the key.
Lorenzo saw the movement.
So did the flashlight.
So did, somehow, the camera in the cellar’s corner.
Rocco’s voice sharpened.
“Put it down, Vivian.”
She looked directly into the camera.
“No.”
There was a pause.
Then Rocco said, “I knew you would be trouble the first time I saw you. Sixteen, standing beside your mother’s coffin, not crying. A girl who does not cry in public is either broken or dangerous.”
Vivian lifted her chin.
“I was both.”
The intercom went silent.
Then the cellar door locks clicked.
Once.
Twice.
Lorenzo turned toward Gabriel.
“Can you open it?”
“With time.”
“We don’t have time,” Vivian said.
She was staring at the far wall.
“What?” Lorenzo asked.
“This house was built during Prohibition.”
“Yes.”
“Wine cellars in Prohibition houses rarely have one exit.”
Enzo had said something similar once over breakfast, while explaining why old houses were more honest than new men. Vivian had laughed then. Lorenzo had been reading a contract and pretended not to listen.
He had always listened more than he admitted.
Vivian moved along the stone wall, touching mortar lines.
“Your grandfather moved liquor through here.”
“My great-grandfather.”
“Even better. Older sins have better tunnels.”
Despite everything, Gabriel coughed like he might laugh.
Lorenzo joined Vivian at the wall.
“What are you looking for?”
“Air.”
He watched her hands move over stone.
“You’ve done this before.”
“My mother hid from creditors in a pantry wall for two hours when I was eleven.”
“That is a terrible childhood story.”
“I have worse.”
She pressed a stone near the base.
Nothing.
Then another.
A faint draft touched the candle flame on a nearby tasting table.
Vivian looked at him.
“There.”
Gabriel and Lorenzo pushed together. The stone panel resisted, then gave with a low scrape. Cold air rushed in from a narrow passage.
Agent Vale stared.
“I’m beginning to understand why Rocco wanted you gone.”
Vivian stepped toward the opening.
Lorenzo caught her arm—not tightly, only enough to make her stop.
“I go first.”
She looked down at his hand.
He released her immediately.
“I am trying to protect you,” he said.
“I know.”
“And you hate it.”
“I hate that you learned protection from men who confuse it with control.”
That struck him silent.
She softened, not enough to forgive, but enough to be Vivian.
“You may go first if you ask instead of decide.”
The room waited.
Smoke from upstairs began leaking under the locked cellar door.
Lorenzo had commanded men in wars for territory, money, reputation. Asking his wife for permission to step into a tunnel should not have felt harder.
It did.
“May I?” he said.
Vivian moved aside.
“Yes.”
The passage smelled of earth and old water. They moved through it single file, Gabriel behind Lorenzo, Vivian behind Gabriel, Agent Vale and her men following with Charles between them. The tunnel sloped upward toward a grated exit near the old greenhouse.
Halfway through, Vivian stumbled.
Lorenzo turned instantly.
“I’m fine,” she said before he asked.
“You are pregnant and were nearly killed twice today.”
“Three times, if we count marriage.”
Gabriel made the choking sound again.
Lorenzo looked at Vivian.
She did not smile, but the corner of her mouth considered it.
That almost undid him.
At the tunnel’s end, Gabriel forced the grate open. They emerged behind the greenhouse, where rain had become mist. In the distance, sirens and shouting still circled the house.
Lorenzo took out his phone. Signal returned in weak bars.
He called Enzo.
“Get me a car to Hudson Mutual.”
A beat.
Enzo said, “Sir, you already have one.”
Headlights appeared beyond the greenhouse.
Not Lorenzo’s.
A vintage black town car rolled out from behind the hedges.
The rear window lowered.
Adrian Marchetti looked out, hair damp, expression unreadable.
“Before anyone accuses me of ruining another family moment,” he said, “Rocco’s men are two minutes ahead of us.”
Vivian stepped forward.
“How do you know?”
Adrian looked at her, then at Lorenzo.
“Because Lucia left me something too.”
May you like
He opened his hand.
Resting in his palm was the other half of a broken music box key.
