Chapter 7: The Night the Music Answered
I turned off the player.
Vivian gripped the desk.
“I never denied him treatment.”
“You called every foundation my father applied to,” I said.
“You told them he was a fraud.”
“I protected my family’s name.”
“You protected royalty checks.”
Falk straightened his jacket.
“A recording is not a verdict.”
“No,” Vincent said.
“But the ledgers, false contract and altered cylinder will interest people who issue them.”
Falk smiled.
“Your family’s businesses are named in those ledgers too.
Expose me, and the Moretti name falls with mine.”
Vincent looked at his mother’s score.
“Then it falls,” he said.
The next evening, Falk appeared before a packed opera hall and announced that my performance had been canceled.
“Miss Marlow has attempted to claim a composition legally owned by me,” he told the audience.
“The court has issued a temporary order preventing her from performing it.”
Vivian stood beside him with two attorneys.
For one terrible moment, applause came from Falk’s supporters.
He looked down at me.
“Return to the balcony, Elena.
Perhaps they still need someone to clear the glasses.”
I walked onto the stage.
Falk held up the court order.
“Play one note and you will be detained.”
“I am not playing your concerto.”
I sat at the piano.
“What are you doing?” Vivian demanded.
“I am playing my father’s unfinished piece.
The one none of you knew existed.”
My hands touched the keys.
The melody began with three quiet notes from Isabella’s theme, then turned into something my father had written for me.
Falk’s expression shifted when the music reached a passage documented in the original score but absent from his published version.
Behind me, the projector lit the stage with Thomas’s handwritten pages, the royalty statements and the forged signature.
Vincent walked to the microphone.
“My mother and Thomas Marlow composed the Moretti-Marlow Concerto together.
Adrian Falk and Edmund Ashcroft took it.
Vivian Ashcroft continued collecting the money after learning the truth.”
Vivian rushed toward the projector controls.
Victor blocked her.
“You cannot prove I knew,” she said.
Cora’s recorded voice played through the speakers.
“Your father had been gone six years when this note was written.
You emptied it.”
Then Vivian’s answer filled the hall.
“My father removed several objects from that box after Thomas fell ill.”
Her own voice continued through every attempted bribe and threat.
People rose from their seats, but no one applauded.
Falk pointed at Vincent.
“Your mother was unstable, and Thomas was a desperate repairman.
Without me, no one would have heard their childish music.”
I stood beside him.
“Without them, you had no music at all.”
The side doors opened.
Two financial investigators entered with the bank manager and a court officer.
The officer approached Falk.
“Adrian Falk, you are required to surrender all original documents and recording materials named in this preservation order.”
Falk tore several pages from his folder.
I caught his wrist before he reached the candle on the piano.
“You already buried my father once,” I said.
“You do not get to burn what remains.”
The bank manager took the pages.
Vivian backed toward the aisle, but a second officer stopped her.
“You cannot treat me like a common thief,” she said.
I removed my old apron from beneath the piano bench and held it out to her.
“You were right about one thing, Vivian.
They do allow anyone inside.”
She stared at the apron, then at the silent audience.
“I may lose the foundation,” she said, “but you will always be the maid who needed a Moretti to save her.”
“No,” Vincent replied.
“Elena saved herself.
I merely stopped standing in her way.”
Falk was escorted toward the door.
He twisted back to face me.
“You will never play that concerto as well as I did.”
I sat at the piano and played the three notes he had changed.
Falk’s shoulders dropped.
When the doors closed behind him, Vincent approached me.
“I believed the photograph before I believed you,” he said.
“I cannot ask you to forget that.”
“No,” I replied.
“You cannot.”
He looked toward the empty seat beside mine.
“Then tell me what I can do.”
May you like
I closed the piano lid.
“I don’t know if I can trust you long enough to find out.”
