Chapter 3 - The Sapphire Key
I returned to my cramped apartment in the city, miles away from the platinum and lace of my family’s world. I sat at my cheap wooden table, staring at a photograph of Genevieve from the gala.
“Look inside the sapphire.”
Eleanor’s dying words echoed in my mind. Genevieve had worn a massive sapphire necklace that night. I made a phone call to a woman named Jax, a former corporate espionage hacker I had befriended during my years away from the family.
"Jax, I need to get close to my step-aunt," I said when she answered.
"The Black Widow of Wall Street?" Jax whistled over the line. "She rarely leaves that fortress of hers. But she does have a weekly fitting at a private jeweler in Manhattan to have her pieces polished."
The next afternoon, I bribed a valet outside the jeweler and slipped through the service entrance. I found Genevieve’s emerald and sapphire necklace resting on a velvet tray in a private viewing room while she was sipping champagne in the lobby.
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I picked up the heavy piece. The central sapphire was enormous, but as I tilted it under the jeweler's magnifying lamp, I noticed a microscopic seam. It wasn't just a gemstone. It was a hollow locket.
I pressed a tiny latch on the back. It popped open. Inside was a tightly folded, encrypted micro-SD card. Genevieve had been carrying her own destruction around her neck without even knowing it.
