Chapter 3 - The Secret Inside the Nursery
Adrian stared at the name on the mirror.
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Then he turned to his guards.
“Seal the estate. Nobody leaves.”
Men rushed through the corridors, checking doors and windows. Dante searched the nursery while Adrian lifted Emma from her crib.
The baby stirred against his chest, made a small distressed sound, then settled when he whispered her name.
That tender gesture unsettled me more than his anger ever had.
This was the man who had struck me without listening. The man who had threatened to kill me. Yet he held his daughter with the careful desperation of someone who knew how close he had come to losing everything.
I forced myself to look away.
“Why would my father steal documents belonging to your wife?”
Adrian stopped rocking Emma.
“My wife, Sofia, died seven months ago, shortly after Emma was born.”
“How?”
“The official report said complications following childbirth.”
“And you believed it?”
His jaw tightened.
“I believed the doctors who treated her.”
Dante emerged from the wardrobe holding a tiny black device.
“Someone installed a transmitter behind the nursery’s baby monitor.”
Adrian handed Emma to a nurse and took the device.
“Can you trace it?”
“Not from here.”
He looked at me.
“Your father knew Sofia?”
“I haven't seen him since I was twelve.”
“That wasn't my question.”
I shook my head.
“My mother said he was a mechanic. He worked long hours, disappeared for days, and sometimes came home with bruises. I thought he was involved in ordinary crime. I never knew anything about the Valentes.”
Dante exchanged a glance with Adrian.
“What?” I demanded.
“Mateo Ruiz wasn't a mechanic,” Dante said. “He managed financial records for my employer's father. He disappeared after three million dollars vanished from a private account.”
I felt sick.
“My father was a thief?”
“Possibly,” Adrian replied. “Or somebody wanted him blamed.”
He studied my face as if trying to determine whether I was lying.
“I need to know something, Isabella. Did your father ever mention a woman named Evelyn?”
“No.”
“An account called the Saint Fund?”
“No.”
“Anything about a child who wasn't supposed to survive?”
I looked at the sleeping baby in his arms.
“Why would he tell me something like that?”
Adrian didn't answer.
Instead, he handed Emma back to the nurse and ordered everyone out except Dante and me.
“My father maintained a private ledger,” he explained. “When he died, it disappeared. Sofia later found evidence that someone had been siphoning money from it. She told me she knew who was responsible, but she wanted proof before accusing anyone.”
“Karen?”
His eyes sharpened.
“I didn't say that.”
“But she was involved with my father.”
“We don't know what their arrangement was.”
Dante returned from the hallway holding a small silver key.
“We found this underneath the dresser.”
It bore a number engraved on one side.
317.
Adrian's face went pale.
“That can't be right.”
“What does it open?” I asked.
He closed his fist around the key.
“A storage vault my father ordered sealed the night he died.”
Then every light in the nursery went out.
From the darkness came the sound of a phone vibrating.
The device was in Dante's hand.
May you like
A new message appeared on the screen.
STOP SEARCHING FOR THE DEAD, OR YOU'LL LEARN WHY THEY WERE BURIED.
