Chapter 2 - THE BLUE HOUSE
Adrian took Clara and Mia into the hotel’s private library while his security chief locked down the ballroom.
Victoria pounded on the doors from the hallway.
“You can’t humiliate me like this!”
Adrian ignored her.
Clara sat on a leather couch with Mia in her lap. The baby had finally stopped crying, but Clara kept glancing at every doorway.
“Who is Miss Bell?” Adrian asked gently.
“The lady at the blue house.”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know the street.” Clara swallowed. “Near water. Big red bridge far away.”
“Did your mother live there?”
Clara shook her head.
“Mommy was there at first. Then men came at night. Miss Bell said Mommy got sick and went somewhere safe.”
Adrian’s chest tightened.
For eighteen months, Victoria had shown him emails supposedly written by Elise. First angry. Then distant. Finally one saying she and Clara had been killed in a crash outside Montreal.
He had seen a death certificate.
A police report.
A sealed urn.
He had buried ashes he believed belonged to his child.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
Clara’s face crumpled.
“They said you didn’t want us.”
Adrian closed his eyes.
Mia grabbed his finger.
“How old is she?”
“Ten months.”
He calculated without meaning to.
Ten months.
Elise had disappeared nineteen months ago.
Clara watched his face.
“She’s your baby too.”
The door opened. Marcus Reed, Adrian’s security chief, stepped inside holding a black phone sealed in an evidence bag.
“We found this in the diaper bag.”
“Whose?”
“Not Clara’s.”
Marcus turned the screen toward him.
There were dozens of messages from a saved contact identified only as V.
KEEP THEM INSIDE UNTIL AFTER THE CEREMONY.
IF THE OLDER GIRL RUNS, CALL ME FIRST.
And the final message, sent twenty-two minutes earlier:
THEY’RE GONE. GET TO THE HOTEL BEFORE ADRIAN SEES THEM.
Adrian looked toward the locked door.
Outside, Victoria had stopped shouting.
Marcus’s phone rang.
May you like
He answered, listened, and his face changed.
“Sir, Victoria is gone.”
