Chapter 4
I took the flash drive from Lucy like it might explode.
Emma started shaking harder.
Camille Blackwell recovered first.
“That belongs to my daughter,” she said.
Detective Collins looked at her.
“How do you know what it is?”
Camille’s lips pressed together.
A mistake.
Small, but fatal.
I closed my hand around the drive.
“Lucy,” I said softly, “where did you get this?”
Lucy looked at Emma.
Emma nodded through tears.
“It’s okay, sweetheart.”
Lucy whispered, “Miss Emma gave it to me when Bianca made me hide in the pantry.”
My chest tightened.
The pantry.
Another room in my own house that had become a prison while I was away signing deals and smiling for cameras.
Detective Collins held out an evidence bag.
“We need to preserve that.”
I handed it over.
Camille stepped forward.
Vincent blocked her path.
She looked at him like he was furniture.
“Move.”
He did not.
For the first time since I had known her, Camille Blackwell had no room to command.
No ballroom.
No board table.
No circle of rich friends laughing at her cruelty.
Just my foyer, two police officers, and her daughter in cuffs outside.
Detective Collins asked Emma to sit.
Emma refused.
“I can stand.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Yes,” Emma whispered. “I do.”
I understood then that standing mattered to her.
Maybe because Bianca had made her feel small for too long.
Maybe because fear had bent her, and she was done bending.
The paramedics checked Lucy in the sitting room.
She kept one hand in mine.
Every time someone touched her arm, she looked at me first.
Asking permission without asking.
I hated myself for all the moments I had missed.
The doctor at the hospital later told me that guilt was common.
I did not care if it was common.
It still felt like a blade.
At the house, Detective Collins borrowed my secure laptop and opened the flash drive in front of me, Emma, and my attorney Adrian.
There were folders.
Dates.
Videos.
Photos.
Audio files.
My name on several documents.
Lucy’s name on more.
The first video showed Bianca standing in the upstairs hallway three weeks earlier.
Lucy was crying behind a locked door.
Bianca spoke into the camera, smiling.
“See? Dramatic little thing. This is what Vittorio deals with.”
Marcus’s voice came from off-screen.
“Push harder. We need him to think she’s unstable before the wedding.”
I gripped the edge of the desk.
Adrian muttered, “My God.”
The next file was worse.
An audio recording.
Bianca and Camille in the garden.
Camille said, “Once you marry him, you petition for residential control. The child is fragile. The father travels. It will not be hard.”
Bianca laughed.
“He adores that little brat.”
“Men adore what they are trained to protect,” Camille replied. “Make protection feel exhausting.”
Emma began to cry silently.
Lucy was upstairs with a paramedic by then, thank God.
I could not imagine her hearing those words.
Detective Collins copied everything.
Adrian paced near the windows.
“This is conspiracy.”
“It is more than that,” Emma said.
We all turned.
Her face was wet, but her voice had changed.
Something had broken open.
“Marcus owes money.”
“To whom?” I asked.
She looked at Camille.
Camille’s expression went dead.
Emma swallowed.
“To people who believed Mr. DeLuca would finance the wedding settlement.”
Adrian looked at me.
“There is no wedding settlement.”
Emma nodded.
“I heard Bianca arguing. She said if you did not sign the revised prenuptial agreement, they would use Lucy.”
The room went quiet.
I remembered the revised agreement Bianca’s lawyer had sent last week.
A harmless update, she called it.
A protection clause.
I had not signed.
I had been too busy.
For once, being busy had saved us.
Camille laughed softly.
“You are listening to household help over family.”
I looked at her.
“You are not my family.”
Her eyes hardened.
“My daughter gave you a second chance after your wife died. She made you respectable again.”
Something inside me snapped.
“Elena made me a father. Bianca made herself a threat.”
Camille raised her chin.
“You think this ends with police? You have no idea how many people will protect us.”
Detective Collins stepped closer.
“Are you threatening a witness?”
Camille smiled.
“I am stating reality.”
Then my phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
A text appeared.
It was a photo of Lucy at school.
Taken through the fence.
Under it were five words.
Drop the charges by noon.
Emma gasped.
Detective Collins took the phone.
Camille did not look surprised.
Not enough.
May you like
That was when I knew the Blackwells still had someone outside.
And whoever it was had already been close enough to my daughter to touch her life.
