Chapter 5 - Locker 317
The storage facility sat beneath an abandoned bank in downtown Chicago.
Dante drove. Adrian sat beside him, reading the photograph of Daniel Santos on his phone, while Detective Santos rode in the back with me.
Nobody spoke.
I held Lucia's bracelet in my palm and rubbed the scratched clasp with my thumb.
When I was little, Lucia used to hide underneath my bed during thunderstorms. I would crawl in beside her and promise that nothing bad would ever happen while I was there.
I had made the same promise when she was diagnosed with her heart condition.
Now I couldn't even tell her where I was.
The vault required two keys. Adrian carried one. The other was the silver key found in Emma's nursery.
Inside locker 317 sat a battered metal case, a stack of medical files, and a small tape recorder.
Adrian opened the case.
The first file contained photographs of his late wife, Sofia, entering a hospital. The second held financial transfers from the Saint Fund. The third listed the names of children whose medical payments had mysteriously stopped.
Lucia's name was near the bottom.
My legs weakened.
Her surgery had been scheduled twice. Both times, the hospital had postponed it because funding had supposedly disappeared.
I looked at the dates.
The transfers stopped six weeks ago.
The same week I began working at the Valente estate.
Someone had been watching my family long before I found Emma.
Adrian picked up the tape recorder and pressed PLAY.
His father's voice filled the vault.
“If you're hearing this, someone has discovered the Saint Fund. The money was never mine. It belonged to the children. Silas knows where the remaining accounts are hidden. Trust no one who offers you an easy explanation.”
The recording crackled.
Then came a second voice.
Karen's.
“I did everything you asked. Sofia never should have seen those records.”
A man answered.
“You were supposed to keep her quiet.”
“She was my employer's wife, not my responsibility.”
“She became your responsibility the moment you accepted my money.”
Adrian stopped the recording.
I had never seen him look so shaken.
“Silas is my uncle,” he said. “My father's younger brother.”
Dante pulled another file from the case.
Inside was a birth certificate for Emma, followed by a document bearing Sofia's signature. The document stated that, if anything happened to her, guardianship of the Saint Fund would pass to Emma when she reached adulthood.
A second page changed everything.
If Emma died before then, control of the fund would transfer to Silas.
Three million dollars had become considerably more important.
Adrian stared at his daughter's name.
“This was never only about money.”
“No,” Santos said. “It's about who inherits the evidence.”
A sound came from the corridor.
Footsteps.
Dante drew his weapon and moved toward the door.
Then a gunshot rang through the facility.
Adrian grabbed my arm and shoved me behind the metal shelves.
When Dante returned, blood ran down his forehead.
“They're here.”
“How many?” Adrian demanded.
Dante looked at the open vault.
May you like
“Enough to know we found exactly what they were afraid of.”
Then the lights went out, and someone locked the vault door from the outside.
