Chapter 3
Marcus copied the recording before Detective Mercer could seize the phone.
Then he sent it to three federal prosecutors, two reporters, and a private server outside Cole Industries.
“If one copy disappears, ten more surface,” he said.
For the first time since entering my kitchen, I felt we had struck back.
It still did not keep Grace out of handcuffs.
Mercer escorted her from the hospital after the doctor discharged her.
Lily kicked and screamed in my arms.
“Mommy!”
Grace turned at the elevator.
“Be brave, baby. I love you.”
The doors closed between them.
I felt Lily’s body collapse against mine.
The child welfare officers agreed to let her remain with me for one night after Marcus filed an emergency petition and produced the DNA results.
They placed a caseworker in my home.
I took Lily to the guest room nearest mine, but she froze at the doorway.
“This isn’t where I sleep.”
“Where would you feel safe?”
“Mommy’s room.”
Grace’s small basement room contained a narrow bed, Lily’s drawings, and a suitcase that had never been unpacked.
They had been ready to run every day they lived under my roof.
Lily crawled beneath Grace’s blanket.
I lay on the floor beside her until she stopped crying.
At dawn, Marcus called.
The Cole Industries board had suspended me as chief executive.
Conrad controlled four directors through the planned merger. My engagement to Victoria had been written into the agreement as proof the two families would remain united.
I had always found that clause old-fashioned.
Now I understood it was a leash.
“They froze your corporate accounts,” Marcus said.
“My personal accounts?”
“Still accessible, but expect challenges.”
“Get Grace released.”
“I’m working on bail.”
I left Lily with the caseworker and drove to the county courthouse.
Reporters crowded the entrance.
Someone had leaked photographs of Grace beside headlines calling her an obsessed former lover and suspected child abductor.
Victoria stood on the courthouse steps in dark glasses.
She had already been released.
When she saw me, she approached as cameras flashed.
“Nathan, I forgive you,” she announced.
I kept walking.
She caught my sleeve.
“This is your last chance.”
I leaned close enough that only she could hear.
“If you ever approach my daughter again, I’ll make sure every person in America knows what you did.”
Her smile remained fixed for the cameras.
“You won’t have a company by Friday.”
Grace’s bail hearing lasted fourteen minutes.
Mercer claimed she had fake passports, international reservations, and cash hidden in her room.
I had never seen the cash.
The judge set bail at five hundred thousand dollars.
I paid it.
Grace emerged through a side door with her arm in a sling.
She looked at me as if she did not know whether to hug me or run.
“Where’s Lily?”
“Waiting for us.”
Her knees weakened.
I caught her carefully.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“You didn’t create this.”
“I brought it into your home.”
“It was already there. I just refused to see it.”
We drove to Vermont that afternoon.
Marcus stayed with Lily and the caseworker because taking her across state lines could be twisted into another kidnapping accusation.
The neurological facility sat beyond a row of pine trees near Burlington.
A receptionist denied knowing anyone named Eleanor Cole.
I showed her the photograph.
Her hands tightened around her pen.
“That is Ellen Rivers.”
“Take me to her.”
“I can’t release patient information.”
Grace placed my father’s letter on the desk.
“Richard Cole paid this facility for twenty-seven years. Call your director before we call the police.”
Ten minutes later, an administrator escorted us to a locked wing.
My mother sat near a window folding paper birds.
Her hair was white now.
A scar ran from her temple into her hairline.
She looked up when I entered.
The paper bird slipped from her fingers.
“Nathan?”
I had imagined my mother’s voice thousands of times.
Hearing it broke something inside me.
I crossed the room and dropped to my knees beside her chair.
“Mom.”
She touched my face with both hands.
“You grew up.”
I could not stop crying.
“Why didn’t you come home?”
Fear replaced her joy.
“Richard said you died.”
Grace covered her mouth.
My mother gripped my wrists.
“He brought me photographs of a child’s grave. Your name was on it.”
“My father told me you drowned.”
“He tried to make sure I did.”
Her memory came in fragments.
On the night of the boating accident, my father confronted her over documents she had discovered linking Cole Industries to Bennett shell companies.
Conrad was using construction contracts to launder bribes.
My mother threatened to go to federal investigators.
Richard took her onto the lake to “talk.”
The boat exploded.
A fisherman rescued her, but she woke in a private clinic with a head injury.
My father told the world she was dead.
“He said he would kill you if I tried to leave,” she whispered.
“Why keep you alive?”
“I had hidden the original ledger. Richard needed to know where.”
Grace sat beside her.
“Did you ever tell him?”
My mother shook her head.
A loud alarm sounded in the corridor.
The administrator rushed inside.
“There’s a fire in the west wing.”
Smoke began sliding beneath the door.
Grace tried the handle.
It was locked from the outside.
I struck the door with my shoulder.
“Help us!”
Through the narrow window, I saw a man in a maintenance uniform walking away.
He glanced back.
I recognized him as Owen Price, the head of security at Bennett Tower.
My mother grabbed my hand.
“They found me.”
I smashed a chair against the window until the glass broke.
As smoke filled the room, my mother pressed a tiny brass key into my palm.
“The ledger is beneath the angel,” she whispered. “But Richard left something else with it.”
“What?”
May you like
Her eyes filled with terror.
“Proof that Victoria was never supposed to marry you.”
