The Ring He Stole

Chapter 2: The Message

Rosalind's POV

The doorman found me standing outside under the awning, still in the wine-stained dress, still holding nothing.

Need a cab, Madame?

I opened the app on my phone and stared at the screen without pressing anything. My hands had stopped shaking somewhere between the table and the door. Now they just felt empty, like they'd forgotten what they were supposed to be doing without a ring on one of them. The rain had picked up while I stood there, fine and cold, catching the streetlight in a haze around the awning's edge.

You alright? He'd worked this door for years. Tonight he simply stood there, letting the silence be enough. Somehow that comforted me more than a hundred questions would have.

I'm fine, I said. It wasn't true. He didn't push, just angled the small umbrella he kept by the door a little further over me, and for a moment neither of us said anything, the traffic hissing past on the wet street behind us.

A black car pulled up at the curb before I'd finished typing my address. No sticker in the window, no dents, nothing that marked it as anyone's rideshare. Rain slid down the windshield in sheets, catching the gold light spilling out from the restaurant behind me.

The driver got out and came around to open the back door, then paused halfway through it, patting his jacket pocket like he'd almost forgotten something.

I didn't order this.

Mr. Kane did. He asked me to see you home safely.

I don't need a car.

You don't. He said it plainly, no argument in it. But it's raining, and you're not wearing shoes built for six blocks in it.

That startled a short, humorless laugh out of me. I looked down. He wasn't wrong. The heels I'd chosen for tonight, the ones Sebastian liked, the ones that pinched by the second hour.

I don't know this man, I said.

Neither do I, not really. He held the door a fraction wider. I just drive where I'm told and open doors when they need opening. Whatever this is, ma'am, I don't have a say in it.

That honesty caught me off guard more than a rehearsed reassurance would have. I got in the car.

The seats smelled like leather and something faintly citrus. The door shut behind me with a heavy, expensive sound, sealing out the rain and the noise and the version of tonight I'd just walked away from. For a moment I just sat there, letting the quiet settle over me, the kind of silence that only exists inside a car built to keep the world out. I watched the city blur past through rain-streaked glass, streetlights smearing gold across the window, and let myself feel exactly one thing for exactly thirty seconds. Just one. I picked humiliation, because it was easier than the other things waiting behind it.

Then I put it away and looked out the window instead.

My apartment. I caught myself. Our apartment. I gave him the address anyway. It was still my address too, whatever it stopped being tonight.

The driver's eyes met mine briefly in the mirror. Already have it, ma'am.

I hadn't told him where I lived.

How do you know where I live?

His eyes flicked to the mirror again, then back to the road. Mr. Kane provided it.

That's not normal, you understand that.

No, ma'am. It isn't.

That's it? That's all you're going to say?

He almost smiled at that, the first real expression he'd shown all ride. Man like Mr. Kane doesn't explain himself to me either. I just drive the car he tells me to drive, and hand over what he tells me to hand over. You want answers, you're going to have to get them from him directly.

I sat back against the seat. A stranger in an expensive suit had my ring, knew where I lived, and had a car waiting before I'd decided I needed one. The rest of the ride passed in silence, the wipers ticking back and forth, my own reflection ghosting over the passing buildings every time we slowed at a light. I watched a couple huddled under one umbrella at a crosswalk, her laughing at something, his arm around her waist, and looked away before the ache of it could settle anywhere permanent. The city looked the same as it had this morning, the same lit storefronts, the same wet pavement, and none of it looked familiar at all.

The car pulled up outside my building twenty minutes later. The driver came around again to open my door, and this time he didn't reach into his jacket right away. He stood there a second too long, like he was reconsidering something.

Mr. Kane changed his instructions, he said finally, and held out a small cream envelope.

Changed them how?

He was going to have me deliver this tomorrow morning instead. He looked down at the envelope, then back at me, something almost apologetic in it. Then he called back thirty seconds later and told me to give it to you tonight. I don't ask why. I just do what the second call says, since it's always the one that counts.

I took it without thinking. The paper was stiff and heavy in my hand. No name on the front. No return address. Just my initials, R.M., pressed into the corner in small embossed letters. I stood on the sidewalk in the rain and turned it over twice before I made myself go inside.

The lobby was empty this late. My heels echoed against the marble the whole walk to the elevator, and I watched my own reflection in the brass doors, mascara smudged at the corners of my eyes, dress dark with wine down one side. I didn't recognize the woman looking back at me. Or maybe I did, and that was the problem.

The apartment was dark. I dropped my purse by the door, kicked off my heels, and sat down on the edge of the couch still wearing a dress ruined by someone else's wine. The heater ticked somewhere behind the wall, the only sound in the whole apartment besides my own breathing. I looked around the room, the empty second side of the closet door left ajar, the two coffee mugs still in the sink from that morning when there'd still been two of us. One had lipstick on the rim, mine, from a morning I couldn't even remember properly now, it felt so far away. I sat with that for a moment before I let myself open the envelope.

Inside was a single card. No letterhead. Two lines, sharp and slanted, ink pressed hard enough into the paper that I could feel the letters on the back of the card with my thumb.

Keep your left hand empty. You'll need the space for what's coming.

No signature. It didn't need one.

I read it three times. Underneath the two lines, pressed faintly into the paper like an afterthought, was a small drawing. A single ring, hand sketched, with a line drawn straight through the center of the band like a crack.

I sat there holding it, turning it in the lamplight, tracing the crack in the little sketch with the pad of my thumb the way I used to trace the engraving inside my own ring. I set the card down against the base of the lamp, propped so I could see it from the couch.

I reached for my phone.

My phone lit up on the coffee table before I'd decided. Sebastian's name, then his name again a second time when I let it ring out.

I didn't answer either.

The screen went dark. Then it lit up a third time, a different name this time, one that wasn't in my contacts at all.

Unknown Number: Keep the card.