Chapter 7 - WHAT AVA SAW
By morning, the estate felt like a crime scene wrapped in wilting white roses.
Detective Cross questioned Ava again, this time without Celeste in the room.
“I need you to think carefully,” she said. “Did you ever see Dr. Harlan with your uncle Adrian?”
Ava nodded.
“Twice.”
“When?”
“Last month. Uncle Adrian gave him an envelope.”
“Did you see what was inside?”
“Money.”
Cross wrote it down.
Ava looked toward Grace, who was drawing at the end of the table.
“There’s something else.”
Celeste appeared in the doorway. “Ava, we are leaving.”
Ava shrank.
Emiliano stepped between them. “She decides when she’s done talking.”
Celeste’s eyes flashed. “She is my daughter.”
“And Grace is mine. That didn’t stop you.”
Ava’s voice shook. “Mom made me hurt her.”
Celeste stopped breathing.
Grace looked up.
Ava pressed both hands over her mouth, then forced herself to continue.
“The pool party. Grace didn’t push me in. Mom told me to stand close to the edge. She said when Grace walked by, I should fall and scream.”
Grace’s crayon slipped from her fingers.
Emiliano remembered that day. Celeste had held a sobbing Ava while telling him Grace was jealous and dangerous.
He had made Grace apologize.
The shame hit him hard.
He knelt beside his daughter. “I believed something that wasn’t true.”
Grace didn’t look at him. “You were mad at me.”
“I was. And I was wrong.”
“Why didn’t you ask me?”
He had no good answer.
“I should have.”
Grace finally looked up. Tears stood in her eyes, but her voice was steady.
“Then ask me now.”
Emiliano nodded.
“What else did you see?”
Grace glanced toward the hallway.
“Uncle Adrian came into Mommy’s old office yesterday.”
Mateo straightened.
“What did he take?”
“A red folder.”
Emiliano’s pulse jumped.
Isabella had once kept every important document in red folders.
Grace added, “He said, ‘If this is still here, we’re all dead.’”
Then the estate alarm screamed.
May you like
Mateo looked at his security tablet.
Someone had just opened Isabella’s sealed office from the inside.
