Chapter 2 - The Watchmaker’s LieBy midnight, the wedding had become a crime scene.
Nobody called it that officially.
The hotel management used phrases like “temporary security protocol.”
Guests used different words.
Kidnapping.
Murder.
Scandal.
Genevieve sat in an unused conference room on the twenty-second floor while two detectives questioned her.
Again.
Her purse had eventually been searched.
The missing Vale watch wasn’t inside.
Neither was anything else remotely suspicious.
That should have ended Evelyn’s accusation.
It didn’t.
People like Evelyn Vale rarely apologized.
They simply changed the reason they disliked you.
Detective Lena Ortiz closed her notebook.
“You were hired to inspect antique pieces?”
“Yes.”
“By the bride?”
“Through her assistant.”
“And you had access to the display containing the missing watch?”
“For about eight minutes.”
“Did you see the watch?”
Genevieve hesitated.
“No.”
Ortiz noticed.
“Why did that take so long?”
“Because there were six pieces in the case. Four watches, two clocks. I remember them generally.”
“And the missing one?”
“I don’t remember seeing it.”
Detective Marsh, the older man beside Ortiz, leaned back.
“So perhaps it was already gone.”
“Maybe.”
Ortiz slid a photograph across the table.
Genevieve stared.
A gold pocket watch lay against black velvet.
Ornate casing.
Crown above V.
Her chest tightened.
She had seen it.
Not tonight.
Years ago.
In her father’s shop.
Only for a second.
But she was certain now.
“Ms. Hart?”
She looked up.
“Have you seen this watch before?”
“No.”
The lie tasted terrible.
Ortiz studied her.
Then the conference room door opened.
Beck walked in.
His jacket was gone.
His sleeves were rolled to his forearms.
He looked less like a billionaire groom now and more like a man whose wedding had collapsed around him.
Ortiz frowned.
“We’re questioning her.”
“I know.”
“You can wait outside.”
“No.”
Marsh looked amused.
Ortiz did not.
“Mr. Vale—”
“My lawyer tells me Ms. Hart isn’t under arrest.”
“She isn’t.”
“Then I need five minutes.”
Ortiz stared at him.
“Three.”
She and Marsh stepped outside.
Genevieve stood.
“What do you want?”
Beck closed the door.
“Victoria’s car is still downstairs.”
“So?”
“Her phone was found in the service stairwell.”
Genevieve crossed her arms.
“You think I took her?”
“I think somebody wants everyone to think you stole a watch.”
“That’s different.”
“And that somebody disabled the cameras around the same time Victoria vanished.”
Genevieve said nothing.
Beck placed the broken gold fragment on the table.
“We checked this.”
She looked at it.
“It matches the missing watch.”
“I assumed.”
“The watch belonged to my grandfather, Henry Vale.”
Genevieve recognized the name.
Anyone who followed business history did.
Henry Vale had built the family company from regional construction contracts into a national empire.
He had died eighteen years earlier.
There it was again.
Eighteen.
“How did he die?” she asked.
Beck’s eyes sharpened.
“Heart attack.”
“Are you sure?”
The question escaped before she could stop it.
Beck went still.
“Why would you ask that?”
Genevieve looked away.
She could continue lying.
Maybe she should.
But the key upstairs.
Her father’s stopped watch.
Too many coincidences.
“My father repaired watches.”
“I know.”
She blinked.
“How?”
“After you recognized the fragment, I had someone look into you.”
“That’s creepy.”
“It was necessary.”
“No. Necessary is checking whether a bridge is structurally sound. Researching the woman your aunt threw onto the floor is paranoid.”
“My bride is missing.”
That ended the argument.
Beck pulled out his phone.
“Daniel Hart. Hart & Son Horology, although there was never a son.”
“My grandfather named it.”
“Your father worked there for thirty-one years.”
“Yes.”
“He repaired pieces for the Ashfords.”
“Yes.”
“And the Vales.”
Genevieve’s stomach dropped.
She stared at him.
“No.”
Beck turned the phone around.
A scanned invoice appeared on the screen.
HART & SON HOROLOGY.
Client: H. Vale.
Service: Mechanical restoration, custom casing adjustment.
Date: October 14, eighteen years earlier.
Genevieve stopped breathing.
“My father never mentioned your family.”
“Mine never mentioned him.”
“Where did you get that?”
“Our archives.”
She took the phone.
The handwriting at the bottom was Daniel’s.
She recognized every stroke.
Paid in full.
D. Hart.
Beck said quietly, “Three days later, my grandfather died.”
Genevieve looked up.
The room seemed suddenly too small.
“When?”
“October seventeenth.”
Her fingers tightened around the phone.
4:17.
October 17.
10/17.
No.
That didn’t fit.
Unless 417 wasn’t a date.
“What time?”
Beck’s face changed.
“What?”
“What time did he die?”
“I don’t know.”
“Find out.”
“Why?”
Genevieve hesitated.
Then opened her handbag.
From an inner pocket she removed a small silver wristwatch.
She almost never carried it.
Tonight she had because the wedding’s antique displays had made her think of her father.
The watch was scratched.
Plain.
Worth almost nothing.
Beck looked at it.
“What is that?”
“My father’s.”
She placed it on the table.
The hands were frozen.
Four seventeen.
Beck stared.
Neither spoke.
Finally he said, “How long has it been stopped?”
“Since the day he died.”
“When was that?”
“Seven years ago.”
Beck looked confused.
“So it can’t be related.”
“It stopped before he died.”
“How long before?”
“I don’t know.”
She swallowed.
“He refused to let me repair it.”
Beck leaned closer.
“Why?”
“He said some broken things are supposed to stay broken.”
Silence.
For the first time all night, Genevieve wished desperately that her father were alive.
Not because she missed him.
Though she did.
Because she wanted to scream at him.
What did you do?
What were you hiding?
The door opened.
Detective Ortiz returned.
“You’re done.”
Beck ignored her.
“Can I borrow this?”
His hand hovered near Daniel’s watch.
Genevieve grabbed it.
“No.”
“We could examine—”
“No.”
It was irrational.
The watch might contain evidence.
But it was her father’s.
One of the last pieces of him that still felt hers.
Ortiz looked between them.
“What did I miss?”
Genevieve closed her fist around the watch.
“Nothing.”
Ortiz clearly didn’t believe her.
Neither did Beck.
At 1:13 a.m., the hotel security team confirmed the camera shutdown had come from a terminal in the administrative corridor.
Access required an employee card.
But whoever had done it knew the system well enough to erase most of the login record.
Most.
One detail remained.
The shutdown occurred at exactly 9:42 p.m.
Three minutes before Victoria entered the elevator toward the bridal floor.
At 1:37, blood testing confirmed the blood belonged to Victoria.
At 2:04, something worse happened.
A hotel housekeeper found a white satin shoe in a laundry cart on the nineteenth floor.
Victoria’s.
Inside was a folded piece of paper.
Beck opened it in front of Genevieve and Detective Ortiz.
Four words.
ASK THE WATCHMAKER’S DAUGHTER.
Nobody spoke.
Genevieve felt every eye turn toward her.
Ortiz slowly said, “You still want to tell me you know nothing?”
Genevieve stared at the note.
The handwriting wasn’t Victoria’s.
She had seen Victoria’s notes on wedding inventory forms.
Different slant.
Different pressure.
Someone had written this deliberately.
Someone knew who she was.
Someone knew her father.
And someone wanted the police looking directly at her.
Beck’s phone rang.
He stepped away to answer.
Genevieve watched his expression shift.
Confusion first.
Then disbelief.
Then something close to fear.
He ended the call.
“What?” Ortiz asked.
Beck stared at Genevieve.
“My grandfather’s medical records were archived.”
“And?”
“I asked my doctor to pull the death report.”
Genevieve already knew what he was going to say.
She could feel it.
Beck’s voice dropped.
“Henry Vale was pronounced dead at 4:17 a.m.”
The room went silent.
Genevieve’s hand moved unconsciously toward the watch in her bag.
Four seventeen.
Not random.
Never random.
Ortiz noticed.
“What aren’t you telling us?”
Genevieve looked at Beck.
Then at the note.
Then finally reached into her handbag.
She placed her father’s watch on the table.
Ortiz stared at the frozen hands.
4:17.
“Where did you get that?”
“It belonged to my father.”
Beck’s phone vibrated again.
This time a message.
He read it.
And his face went white.
“What?” Genevieve whispered.
He turned the screen toward her.
It was a photograph.
Old.
Grainy.
Taken eighteen years ago outside Hart & Son Horology.
Her father stood beneath the shop awning.
Beside him was Henry Vale.
And between them stood a third man Genevieve didn’t recognize.
On the back of the photograph, someone had written three words.
THEY ALL LIED.
Genevieve barely heard Ortiz ask where the image came from.
Because she was staring at the third man.
Something about him felt familiar.
Not his face.
His posture.
His eyes.
Then she realized why.
He looked like Beck.
Not vaguely.
Not coincidentally.
He looked enough like Beck to be family.
And when Genevieve looked up, Beck had clearly reached the same conclusion.
“My father,” Beck whispered, “told me he’d never met Daniel Hart.”
He stared at the photograph.
May you like
“He lied.”
And for the first time that night, Genevieve understood that whatever her father had hidden, Beck’s family had been hiding it too.
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