Chapter 3
I sent Luke to Lakeview Memory Care before sunrise.
Three cars.
Six men.
Quiet.
No show.
Emma tried to stop me.
“You can’t scare them.”
I looked at her.
“I can scare anyone.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.”
She was sitting against my pillows now, wrapped in a blanket, pale but awake.
Marta had forced broth into her.
Emma drank it like she felt guilty for needing it.
That irritated me more than it should have.
“You don’t owe anyone shame for being hungry,” I said.
She blinked.
“I wasn’t ashamed.”
“You hid bread in napkins.”
Her face reddened.
“That’s different.”
“How?”
She looked down.
“Because sometimes dinner at home wasn’t guaranteed.”
I did not ask yet.
Some truths crack if grabbed too hard.
Luke called at seven.
His voice was flat.
“We have a problem.”
“Talk.”
“Rose Carter is not here.”
Emma heard her mother’s name and sat upright too fast.
Pain hit her.
“Where is she?” I demanded.
“Facility says she was transferred last night.”
Emma’s face emptied.
“No.”
Luke continued.
“Paperwork signed by family guardian. Name is Alan Pierce.”
“My stepfather,” Emma whispered.
“To where?”
“That’s the problem,” Luke said. “They don’t know. Or they’re lying.”
Emma swung her legs over the side of the bed.
Marta blocked her.
“Move,” Emma said.
“No.”
Emma looked at me.
Her eyes were wild.
“My mother doesn’t know where she is if I’m not there. She gets scared. She thinks it’s 1998 sometimes. She asks for my dad.”
Her voice shattered on the last word.
My father had died when I was twelve.
I knew what grief sounded like when it was still a child.
I looked at Luke through the phone.
“Find Alan Pierce.”
“Already on it.”
“Find Vance.”
A pause.
“Danny.”
“Find him.”
“You sure you want to pull Bellaro into this?”
I looked at Emma’s bruised wrist.
“They pulled first.”
By noon, we found Alan.
At a betting room on the south side, drunk enough to brag, stupid enough to talk.
Luke brought him to my estate at dusk.
Emma stood behind my chair when they dragged him into the study.
She had insisted on being there.
I hated that.
I respected it.
Alan Pierce looked at my wheelchair and smiled.
That was his first mistake.
“Well, if it isn’t the famous cripple king.”
Luke hit him once in the stomach.
Alan folded.
I raised a hand.
“Where is Rose?”
He coughed.
“Who?”
Emma stepped forward.
“My mother.”
Alan grinned through pain.
“You always were dramatic.”
Emma went still.
I knew that stillness.
It was what people become when fear has been practiced too long.
I rolled closer.
“Look at me.”
Alan did.
“Where is Rose?”
His smile thinned.
“Vance has her.”
Emma made a small sound.
Alan continued.
“She was collateral.”
I did not move.
If I moved, I would kill him.
“Collateral for what?”
May you like
He looked at Emma.
“For what her dead father stole.”
