Chapter 17 - THE SECRET INSIDE MY MOTHER'S SCISSORS
That evening, I remained in the atelier long after the employees had gone home.
The restored wedding gown stood inside its glass display case.
Its ivory silk shimmered beneath the soft exhibition lights.
I walked toward my desk and opened the small wooden box my father had left six months earlier.
Inside were my mother's antique sewing scissors.
I had barely touched them since receiving them.
Their handles were slightly worn, polished smooth by decades of use.
I remembered watching my mother cut expensive silk with those scissors.
She never allowed anyone else to use them.
“Good tools deserve respect,” she used to tell me.
I turned them over.
Something caught my attention.
There was a tiny engraving near the hinge.
A small orchid.
Beneath it were several numbers.
E.H. — 1989 — A17.
I immediately remembered the archive cabinet Daniel and I had discovered inside Bellamere.
Cabinet A-17.
My hands began trembling.
I called Daniel.
“Can you come to the atelier?”
“Is something wrong?”
“I think my mother left another clue.”
Twenty minutes later, he arrived with a small inspection kit.
We examined the scissors carefully.
The engraving wasn't decorative.
There was a tiny removable pin hidden beneath the handle.
Daniel gently loosened it.
A narrow strip of folded paper emerged.
The handwriting was unmistakably my mother's.
If the first archive is compromised, look where the first dress was made. The original agreement is beneath the foundation.
I read it twice.
“The first dress?”
Daniel looked at me.
“Do you know where she made it?”
I nodded slowly.
“My childhood home.”
The small apartment above the bakery.
The place where my mother had started sewing dresses for wealthy clients before anyone knew her name.
We drove there the following morning.
The bakery was still operating, although the apartment upstairs had been empty for years.
The current owner, an elderly woman named Mrs. Peterson, recognized me immediately.
“Madison? My goodness. You look just like Eleanor.”
I showed her the note.
She read it carefully.
Then she pointed toward the old sewing room.
“Your mother used to keep something beneath the floorboards. She told me never to let anyone remove it unless you came looking.”
My throat tightened.
“She told you that?”
Mrs. Peterson nodded.
“Seven years ago. Before she died.”
We entered the room.
The old sewing table was still there.
I knelt and examined the wooden floor beneath it.
One board was slightly loose.
Daniel helped lift it.
Underneath was a small metal box.
Inside were original sketches, old photographs, and a sealed contract dated 1989.
The contract was signed by Eleanor Hayes and Edward Caldwell.
But there was something else.
A handwritten note attached to the final page.
Adrian Cross must never be allowed to control the Bellamere collection.
I stared at the name.
My mother had known about him thirty years ago.
This wasn't a new conflict.
It was a battle she had been fighting long before I was born.
Then Daniel found a second envelope.
It contained a photograph of three people.
My mother.
Edward Caldwell.
And a much younger Adrian Cross.
May you like
On the back, my mother had written:
The man who helped us build everything is the man who will eventually try to take it.
