Chapter 8 - The House Without Cameras
We returned to my apartment under police escort.
The door had been forced open. Drawers lay overturned, clothes covered the floor, and the mattress had been cut apart.
The music box was gone.
I stood in the middle of the wreckage and felt something inside me harden.
They had taken my freedom, accused me of killing a baby, and now they were threatening Lucia. I was finished being the frightened girl who waited for powerful people to decide what happened next.
“Whoever did this thinks I'm still easy to control,” I said.
Adrian stood beside the shattered dresser.
“They're making a mistake.”
I turned toward him.
“Don't say that as though you're going to solve everything with a gun.”
He accepted the rebuke without answering.
Santos's officers found a footprint in the kitchen and a fiber caught on the broken doorframe. The intruder had worn a uniform belonging to a private security company used by the Valente estate.
Dante examined the photograph of the fiber.
“Silas employs the same company.”
“Can you track the guard?” Santos asked.
“Not without access to the personnel files.”
Adrian handed him his phone.
“Then get access.”
While the men worked, I searched the surviving papers from the apartment. Most were worthless receipts and old medical bills. Then I found a small envelope beneath the loose floorboard where I had hidden emergency cash.
My mother had written my name on it.
Inside was a note.
Isabella, if anyone ever asks you about the music box, do not hand it over. Your father will try to convince you that he was protecting us. He wasn't always the man you remember. But there is still goodness in him, if he chooses it.
I read the note twice.
At the bottom, she had added a sequence of numbers.
317.
The storage vault.
The number had been familiar because my mother had once whispered it while delirious in the hospital. I had assumed it was part of a dream.
Now I understood that the vault had been planned long before Sofia died.
A knock sounded at the door.
Dante drew his gun.
A young man stood in the hallway, soaked from the rain. He wore a delivery uniform and carried a paper bag.
“I have something for Miss Ruiz.”
Nobody moved.
The man placed the bag on the floor and backed away.
Inside was Lucia's hospital bracelet.
A second item lay beneath it, wrapped in a bloodstained cloth.
My father's silver ring.
The note beside it contained one sentence.
BRING EMMA TO THE CHAPEL AT MIDNIGHT, OR YOUR SISTER DIES.
Adrian took the note.
“Absolutely not.”
I looked him directly in the eye.
“Then we'd better find another way to save her.”
Santos checked her watch.
“We have less than six hours.”
May you like
Dante unfolded a map of the city.
And for the first time, Adrian Valente asked me what I thought we should do.
