Part 2

Elena woke with the certainty that someone was watching her.

Sunrise filled Suite 412 with cold gold. Cassian Rowe sat across from the bed in a charcoal suit, motionless except for the thumb resting over the engraving on the locket. Tomas stood near the door with a tablet.

Elena jumped to her feet. Apologies collided in her throat. She tried to smooth the duvet, retrieve her cart, and explain the locket at the same time.

Cassian raised one hand. “Start with where you found it.”

His voice was controlled, not loud. That made her more careful.

“The old ballroom. North wall, behind a radiator cover. I was assigned to clear debris before the surveyors came.”

“When?” Tomas asked.

“Three weeks ago.”

The answer changed the room. Elena admitted that she had been afraid to report it after keeping it overnight, then more afraid with each passing day. She did not mention Maribel until Cassian asked why she had fallen asleep in a guest suite.

“I was tired,” she said.

“Your phone said the locks were changed.”

Elena's face burned. Cassian immediately looked away, as if regretting the intrusion.

“That is not hotel business,” she said.

“Agreed. The locket is.” He placed it on a folded handkerchief. “My mother wore it every day. It disappeared the night we held her memorial here.”

Elena expected suspicion. Instead, Cassian asked Tomas to retrieve the ballroom work orders and the video from the night she found it. He also instructed payroll to calculate every minute of her overtime. When Tomas left, Elena remained by the cart, uncertain whether she was free to move.

“Am I fired?” she asked.

“Not for sleeping after an eleven-hour shift. That failure belongs to management.”

“And the locket?”

“I haven't decided what it means yet.”

Cassian opened it. The photograph showed Celeste Rowe at thirty-two, holding six-year-old Cassian on the hotel roof. Elena noticed a thin paper edge behind the picture.

“Was that always there?” she asked.

Cassian frowned. He used the corner of the handkerchief to lift the photograph. A narrow strip of paper had been folded into the back. Age had stained it brown, but four characters remained legible.

B-19.

Tomas returned with a digital maintenance map. The old ballroom radiators had once been numbered B-01 through B-24. Unit B-19 sat exactly where Elena said she found the locket.

The archived work order carried a signature from the memorial night. Someone had requested emergency access to B-19 at 11:26 p.m., after the guests had left.

The signature belonged to Julian Vell, Cassian's uncle and the hotel's longtime chief financial officer.

Cassian's expression did not break, but his fingers stopped moving.

“Seal the ballroom,” he told Tomas. “No demolition. No calls to my uncle.”

Then he looked at Elena.

“You wanted to return a locket,” he said. “You may have returned a question my family buried fourteen years ago.”