Chapter 2 - The Car Nobody Was Supposed to Check
I was in the garage before Thomas finished his sentence.
The Moretti estate had two garages.
The front garage held the cars used daily.
The rear one was larger, colder, and mostly reserved for vehicles used by staff, deliveries, and security.
Seven cars sat beneath fluorescent lights.
Four were black.
That immediately explained part of Sofia’s story.
A black car.
To a three-year-old, that description could have meant almost anything.
To me, it meant I had four places to start.
Thomas arrived less than five minutes later.
He was sixty-one, broad-shouldered, gray-haired, and had driven for my father before he ever worked for me.
I trusted him more than most people in the house.
But that night, trust had become something I no longer gave automatically.
“Show me.”
Thomas led me toward a black Range Rover parked in the far corner.
“This one.”
I looked through the rear window.
Nothing obvious.
Thomas opened the back door.
The leather had been cleaned.
Recently.
I could smell disinfectant.
“What did you see?”
“Yesterday morning I noticed mud along the rear floor mat.”
“Morning?”
He nodded.
“Around seven.”
“That’s before Vivienne claims Bruno disappeared.”
“Yes.”
“So why are you telling me this now?”
Thomas looked uncomfortable.
“Because I thought the dog had been sick.”
“Explain.”
“There was a reddish smear near the edge of the seat. Small. Not much. I asked Miss Vivienne about it.”
My eyes narrowed.
“You asked her?”
“She told me Bruno cut his paw.”
“Bruno didn’t have a cut paw.”
“I know that now.”
Thomas opened the small trash compartment in the side door.
“It was empty yesterday.”
“And?”
“I checked again after you called.”
He pulled out a folded tissue sealed inside a clear plastic bag.
A faint brown stain marked one corner.
My stomach tightened.
“It may not be blood,” he said quickly.
“Don’t call it blood until we know.”
Thomas nodded.
“What else?”
“The mileage.”
“What about it?”
“I record vehicle mileage every evening.”
That was another habit inherited from my father.
Thomas showed me his phone.
Wednesday morning: 18,442 miles.
Thursday morning: 18,506.
Sixty-four miles.
“Who drove it?”
“That’s the problem.”
“No booking?”
“No.”
“Security?”
“No record.”
“Keys?”
“Returned to the drawer.”
I walked toward the key cabinet.
Each vehicle key was tagged.
The Range Rover’s key sat exactly where it belonged.
“Who can access this room?”
“Too many people.”
“How many?”
“Senior staff. Security. Miss Vivienne.”
I looked at him.
“She has access?”
“You gave it to her.”
I remembered.
Six months earlier, Vivienne complained that waiting for a driver felt ridiculous when she needed to go into town.
I had given her full household vehicle privileges.
At the time, it had seemed harmless.
Now it felt like negligence.
“Get Douglas.”
Thomas nodded.
“And don’t tell anyone else why.”
While I waited, I examined the rear compartment.
Bruno’s hair was distinctive.
Short, coarse, black.
Finding black hair inside a black vehicle wasn’t easy.
But beneath the front passenger seat, caught around one of the metal rails, I found three strands.
I pulled out my phone and photographed them.
Then Douglas appeared.
“You wanted me?”
“Which security cameras cover this garage?”
“The interior camera and the south driveway camera.”
“Were they offline too?”
He paused.
“The interior camera was.”
“How convenient.”
“The storm affected several connections.”
“Did the storm also delete the backup footage?”
His face stiffened.
“No.”
“Then show me.”
We went to the security office.
My security chief, Raymond Shaw, was already there.
Raymond had worked private security for wealthy families across New York and Connecticut for nearly two decades.
He was calm by nature.
That night, he looked uneasy.
I noticed.
“Something wrong?”
“We have missing footage.”
“How much?”
“Forty-seven minutes.”
“From when?”
“9:52 to 10:39 Wednesday night.”
Exactly when the back gate opened.
I said nothing.
Raymond continued.
“The system didn’t fail naturally.”
“How do you know?”
“The server log shows a manual interruption.”
“By whom?”
“We’re checking.”
“Check faster.”
Douglas leaned over the console.
“Could someone have done it remotely?”
“If they had administrative access.”
I looked at Raymond.
“Who has administrative access?”
He looked reluctant to answer.
“You. Me. Douglas.”
“And?”
Raymond exhaled.
“Vivienne.”
That was my mistake too.
When we became engaged, Vivienne had slowly integrated herself into the estate.
First she wanted access to the staff calendar.
Then gate schedules.
Then household systems.
It seemed practical.
She was going to be my wife.
Why wouldn’t she know how her future home worked?
Because future wives weren’t supposed to erase security footage and arrange for beloved dogs to disappear.
I pulled out the silver clasp.
Raymond inspected it.
“Cut.”
“Yes.”
“With what?”
“Hard to say.”
“Could Bruno’s collar have broken?”
“No.”
I had already answered that question for myself.
Raymond leaned back.
“If somebody took him, why remove his collar?”
I knew the answer.
“Identification.”
His eyes met mine.
A dog that size would attract attention anywhere.
But without a tag, microchip information wasn’t visible.
If someone wanted to abandon him far enough away, removing the collar made sense.
That possibility made my chest burn.
Bruno trusted people inside this house.
If someone he knew opened a car door, he might have climbed in.
Especially if Sofia had been wrong about him resisting.
But she had said Bruno cried.
I thought of the stain.
“Raymond, arrange testing.”
“For?”
I handed him the sealed tissue.
“And the hair in the Range Rover.”
He took both.
“No police?”
“Not yet.”
Douglas frowned.
“Adrian—”
“If we involve the police tonight, everyone in this house knows we’re investigating.”
“They’ll know anyway.”
“Not what we know.”
I looked toward the security monitors.
“I want everyone to think I believe Bruno wandered away.”
Raymond understood immediately.
“You’re looking for whoever gets nervous.”
“Exactly.”
At breakfast the next morning, I did something difficult.
I pretended.
Vivienne sat across from me drinking coffee.
Maria moved quietly through the dining room.
Sofia sat at a small table near the windows drawing with crayons.
I folded the newspaper.
“I’m putting up a reward.”
Vivienne looked up.
“For Bruno?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“Twenty-five thousand.”
Her cup stopped halfway to her mouth.
Too small a reaction for anyone else to notice.
I noticed.
“That seems excessive.”
“He’s my dog.”
“Adrian, if he wandered far enough—”
“If someone finds him, money will motivate them to call.”
She lowered the cup.
“And if he’s… gone?”
I looked directly at her.
“I’ll find that out too.”
For a fraction of a second, her face tightened.
Then Sofia spoke from the window.
“Bruno likes chicken.”
Maria froze.
“What, sweetheart?”
The child pointed her yellow crayon at Vivienne.
“Lady gave Bruno chicken.”
Vivienne turned.
“Sofia.”
Her voice wasn’t loud.
But Sofia immediately stopped drawing.
I placed both hands on the table.
“When?”
Sofia looked at Maria.
Maria shook her head gently, unsure what to do.
I softened my voice.
“It’s okay.”
Sofia whispered, “Before black car.”
Vivienne laughed.
“She’s inventing things again.”
Sofia’s eyes filled with tears.
“No.”
I turned to Vivienne.
“Did you give Bruno chicken?”
“No.”
“You told me you fed him.”
“His food.”
“So where did the chicken come from?”
“I don’t know.”
Sofia suddenly climbed down from her chair and hurried toward Maria.
“She put sleep in chicken.”
Everyone stopped moving.
I stared at the child.
“What did you say?”
Maria went pale.
“Sofia may have heard—”
“Sleep,” Sofia repeated.
She placed her hands together beneath her cheek, pretending to sleep.
“Bruno eat. Bruno sleepy.”
Vivienne pushed back her chair.
“This is insane.”
“Sit down.”
Her eyes widened.
“Excuse me?”
“I said sit down.”
For the first time since we became engaged, she looked afraid of me.
Not because I threatened her.
I didn’t.
Because she realized I no longer believed her.
“I will not sit here while you let a toddler accuse me of poisoning your dog.”
I stood slowly.
“Nobody said poison.”
Vivienne froze.
That was the first real mistake she made.
Sofia had only said “sleep.”
I had only repeated the word.
Vivienne had supplied the concept herself.
Poison.
Her face changed when she realized it.
Maria picked up Sofia.
“I think we should go.”
“No,” I said gently. “You and Sofia stay.”
Vivienne looked from me to the child.
Then she walked out.
I didn’t stop her.
Raymond entered ten minutes later.
He waited until Maria had taken Sofia outside.
Then he closed the dining-room doors.
“We got something.”
“The test?”
“Preliminary.”
He placed a report in front of me.
“The stain in the Range Rover is canine blood.”
My hand tightened around the paper.
“How much?”
“Not enough to suggest serious injury. Could be a small cut, injection site, anything.”
“Injection?”
Raymond nodded.
“And the hair is consistent with Bruno’s breed and color. We’ll need a direct comparison from his bedding for certainty.”
My jaw clenched.
“Anything else?”
“Yes.”
Raymond placed a photograph beside the report.
It was a highway toll image.
A black Range Rover.
My Range Rover.
Wednesday night.
10:47 p.m.
Thirty-three minutes after the rear gate opened.
“Where?”
“Northbound on Route 22.”
“How far?”
“About sixteen miles from here.”
“Then where?”
“There’s another camera nineteen miles north.”
He showed me the second image.
Same vehicle.
11:09 p.m.
“So whoever drove kept going.”
“Yes.”
“Do we have the driver?”
Raymond zoomed in.
The windshield reflection obscured most of the face.
But the passenger side was clearer.
A woman sat beside the driver.
Blonde hair.
Cream coat.
My pulse slowed.
Vivienne owned a cream coat.
But that wasn’t the detail that made my blood run cold.
Raymond enlarged the image again.
In the rear window, barely visible, was the unmistakable silhouette of a massive black dog.
Bruno.
Alive.
Sitting upright.
He hadn’t wandered away.
He had been put into my car and driven north.
And my fiancée had almost certainly been inside that vehicle.
“Track the route.”
“We are.”
“Every toll. Every camera. Every fuel stop.”
Raymond hesitated.
“There’s more.”
I looked at him.
“The Range Rover wasn’t the only Moretti vehicle recorded north that night.”
He placed another image on the table.
A black sedan.
I recognized it immediately.
It belonged to my late father.
Nobody used it anymore.
It had been kept in storage for sentimental reasons.
According to Raymond, it passed the same highway camera at 11:21 p.m.
Twelve minutes after the Range Rover.
Following it.
“Who drove that?”
“We don’t know.”
I stared at the image.
Then something in the passenger window caught my attention.
A profile.
Male.
Older.
Familiar.
I leaned closer.
My heartbeat changed.
That face belonged to someone I had not seen in fifteen years.
Someone my family believed had disappeared from our lives forever.
Raymond lowered his voice.
“Adrian… do you recognize him?”
I did.
And suddenly Bruno’s disappearance wasn’t only about Vivienne.
It wasn’t only about a dog.
It was connected to something my father had hidden long before his death.
Because the man sitting in my father’s car was my uncle Gabriel.
May you like
And according to everyone in my family, Gabriel Moretti had been dead for twelve years.
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