Chapter 7 - What the Brass Key Unlocks
Z
The rain washed over me as I walked blindly through the streets of Manhattan, my expensive black blazer soaked through, clinging to my shivering frame.
My mind was a chaotic storm of memories. My father sitting at the kitchen table, sipping his black coffee, gently steering me toward certain restaurants. His quiet insistence that I marry someone "successful." His sharp, guarded reaction when I told him Walter's name for the first time.
He hadn't been worried about me marrying an seventy-eight-year-old man. He had been terrified that Walter would recognize his last name.
I pulled out my phone with trembling, wet fingers and dialed my father's number.
It rang three times before he picked up.
"Sally?" my father's voice came through the speaker, warm and casual. "How was the wedding night? Are you at the mansion yet?"
"You used me," I said, my voice cold, dead, and dripping with rain water.
Silence stretched across the line. The warm, fatherly tone vanished instantly.
"Sally... what are you talking about?"
"Arthur Vance," I said, leaning against the cold brick wall of an alleyway. "The Vance Foundation. Two silver arrows. 1998. You sent me to that restaurant on purpose, Dad. You knew Walter dined there every Thursday at seven o'clock."
Another long silence. When my father spoke again, his voice was entirely different—sharper, stripped of all parental warmth.
"You were failing at everything, Sally," he said evenly. "You couldn't hold a job for two weeks. You were thousands of dollars in debt. I gave you a purpose."
"A purpose?!" I screamed into the phone, uncaring that passersby were staring at me. "You used your own daughter as a Trojan horse to infiltrate a grieving old man's life! You helped Julian's father forge those documents thirty years ago, didn't you?"
"Walter's grandfather didn't build that fortune alone!" my father snapped back, his composure slipping. "My family put up the initial capital for the bakery in 1924! We were equal partners! But old man Walter squeezed us out with legal loopholes in the Charter! We deserved our share!"
"So you sent me to steal it?"
"I sent you to secure what is rightfully ours!" my father insisted. "Where is the brass key, Sally? Do you have it?"
I gripped my handbag tighter. "Why do you want the key, Dad?"
"Because the key opens the secondary vault," he revealed, his tone turning desperate. "The ledger Julian took from the bakery is useless without the master code inside that safe. Bring me the key, Sally. We can settle with Julian, take thirty percent of the trust, and you will never have to work a day in your life. You can have the mansion!"
I stared at the black phone screen, disgust rolling through my stomach like nausea.
For twenty-nine years, I had believed I was lazy because I lacked ambition. But looking into the mirror of my father's greed, I finally realized the truth: I hadn't been running away from hard work. I had been running away from becoming him.
"I'm not bringing you anything," I said quietly.
"Sally, don't be stupid!" my father yelled. "Walter kicked you out! I know he did! He will never trust you again! You have nowhere else to go!"
"I'd rather be homeless than be your accomplice," I said.
"Sally—"
I hung up the phone and smashed it against the brick wall, watching the glass screen shatter onto the wet pavement.
I stood alone in the dark alley, the cold rain soaking into my skin. I had no money, no phone, no husband, and no family left. All I had was a handbag containing a two-hundred-dollar refund from a wedding suit, and a simple brass key tied with a blue ribbon.
I pulled the key out of my bag and held it up under the streetlamp.
The explanation would ruin the surprise, Walter had said.
I looked at the small, intricate grooves on the brass stem. Walter had given me this key before he knew who my father was. He had given it to me when he still believed in me.
And then I remembered what Walter said in the sub-basement: The key was never lost. He gave it to me.
The envelope from Oregon.
I looked down at the paper wrapping that had been around the envelope—I had slipped the torn piece of paper with the Oregon return address into my coat pocket earlier.
I pulled it out. The rain had smeared the ink, but the small town name was still legible:
TILLAMOOK, OREGON - P.O. BOX 402.
I didn't need a mansion. I didn't need two million dollars. I needed to fix the damage my family had caused. I needed to find the real heir before Julian and my father did.
I walked out of the alley and headed straight toward the Greyhound bus terminal on 42nd Street.
I walked up to the ticket counter, pulled out the remaining two hundred dollars Walter had returned to me from his wedding suit, and slapped it onto the counter.
"One-way ticket to Tillamook, Oregon," I said firmly.
May you like
The ticket agent looked at my soaked clothes, my flour-stained jacket, and my determined eyes. "That's a three-day bus ride with four transfers, lady."
"Good," I said, clutching the brass key in my pocket. "I've got a lot of thinking to do."
