Chapter 8 - The Locked Room in the East Wing
Dante reached Ellie’s school in twenty-three minutes.
He did not remember most of the drive.
Rosa sat beside him, one hand pressed against her mouth.
Every instinct Dante possessed screamed that they had moved too slowly.
The moment they opened Jacob’s box, someone reacted.
The music-room alarm.
The warning.
Someone knew.
Someone close enough to monitor them.
Ellie was sitting in the principal’s office when they arrived.
The moment Rosa entered, Ellie jumped from her chair.
“Mom!”
Rosa dropped to her knees and pulled her daughter close.
Dante remained at the doorway.
Relief struck him harder than expected.
Ellie looked over Rosa’s shoulder.
“Mr. Mercer.”
Dante nodded.
“You all right?”
“Yes.”
“Did you speak to the man?”
“A little.”
Dante crouched.
“What did he say?”
“He said Mom had sent him.”
“Did you believe him?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Ellie looked at Rosa.
“Mom says if someone different picks me up, they have to know the word.”
Dante looked at Rosa.
“Password?”
She nodded.
Jacob’s idea.
The stranger did not know it.
“What did he look like?” Dante asked.
Ellie described him.
Middle-aged.
Baseball cap.
Glasses.
Nothing distinctive.
The school cameras showed little more.
The photograph he left was more interesting.
Lucia.
Recent.
Dante could tell immediately.
Her hair contained streaks of gray.
She stood outside a small grocery store.
On the back was the warning.
Rosa stared.
“If this is recent…”
“She’s alive,” Dante said.
The sentence felt dangerous to say.
After fifteen years, hope was almost more painful than grief.
Dante called Rebecca.
“Run the store.”
He sent the photograph.
Then he called Adrian.
“Where is Sebastian?”
“At the estate.”
“Keep him there.”
Silence.
“Why?”
“Do it.”
Dante ended the call.
Rosa noticed.
“You think your uncle sent the man?”
“I think someone did.”
“You’re taking Ellie back to the mansion?”
“No.”
“Where, then?”
“Somewhere only I know.”
Rosa’s expression hardened.
“No more secrets.”
“This one keeps her safe.”
“Dante.”
He almost reacted to her using his first name.
She had never done it before.
“I’m not putting my daughter in another hidden room because the Mercer family has problems.”
“I’m not asking you to hide.”
“What are you asking?”
“Trust me for one night.”
Rosa stared at him.
Trust.
A simple word that had become almost meaningless to both of them.
Ellie tugged her mother’s sleeve.
“I trust him.”
Rosa looked down.
“Sweetheart—”
“He hugged me.”
Dante looked away.
As if five minutes were a legally binding character reference.
To Ellie, perhaps they were.
Rosa eventually agreed.
Dante took them to a cottage forty minutes north of the estate.
It belonged to him personally, purchased under an attorney-managed trust Adrian did not know about.
His mother had loved the place.
The cottage overlooked a small lake and had no staff.
Rosa was surprised.
“You come here?”
“Sometimes.”
“Why?”
“No one asks me questions here.”
Ellie walked inside.
“There’s no chandelier.”
Dante looked at her.
“You sound disappointed.”
“The mansion has better ceilings.”
Rosa nearly laughed.
For one hour, the world became strangely ordinary.
Ellie explored.
Rosa made soup from whatever she found in the kitchen.
Dante stood on the porch speaking quietly with Rebecca.
The store in Lucia’s photograph was in Camden, Maine.
The address Jacob left was thirty-five miles away.
Claire Hart.
Dante felt the pieces moving closer.
Then Rebecca found something else.
Claire Hart was fifty-two.
A licensed therapist.
No criminal history.
She had worked for years helping domestic-abuse survivors establish new lives.
Dante stared across the lake.
Lucia had been hiding.
Not as a criminal.
As someone afraid.
Rebecca continued.
“Claire owns the house at the address you gave me.”
“Does Lucia live there?”
“I can’t confirm.”
“Can you find a phone number?”
“I already did.”
Dante wrote it down.
He didn’t call.
Not yet.
Inside, Ellie sat at the kitchen table coloring.
Dante noticed the picture.
Three people.
Ellie.
Rosa.
And Jacob.
This time, there was a fourth person at the edge.
A tall figure in a black suit.
Dante.
“What’s that?” he asked.
Ellie looked embarrassed.
“Nothing.”
“You drew me.”
“You were there.”
“Where?”
“In the picture.”
Dante studied it.
He was drawn much taller than everyone else.
“Why am I enormous?”
“You’re tall.”
“That tall?”
Ellie shrugged.
“You’re also bad at smiling.”
Rosa turned away so he wouldn’t see her expression.
Dante’s phone rang.
Adrian.
“You need to come back.”
“What happened?”
“Sebastian left.”
“I told you to keep him there.”
“I tried.”
“You tried?”
“He realized something was wrong.”
Dante’s voice chilled.
“Where did he go?”
“We don’t know.”
That was not possible.
Sebastian Mercer never went anywhere without a driver.
A guard.
A schedule.
Unless he wanted to disappear.
Adrian continued.
“And something else happened.”
“What?”
“Someone got into your private office.”
Dante stood.
“What did they take?”
“I don’t know.”
“Check.”
“We did.”
Adrian paused.
“Only one thing seems to be missing.”
Dante already feared the answer.
“What?”
“The photograph of Lucia you kept on your desk.”
The photograph Ellie had noticed on the first afternoon.
The original image of Dante and his sister.
Dante looked toward Rosa.
Sebastian was running.
Lucia’s recent photograph had appeared.
And now someone had taken the oldest picture Dante possessed of his sister.
Maybe as a warning.
Maybe because something was hidden inside it.
Dante suddenly remembered the frame.
Lucia had given it to him six months before disappearing.
The back panel had never been removed.
“Adrian.”
“Yes?”
“Find the frame.”
“What?”
“Whoever took the photograph might have left the frame.”
A minute later Adrian returned.
“The frame is here.”
“Open the backing.”
Silence.
Then paper rustled.
Adrian stopped breathing.
“What?”
“There’s something inside.”
Dante gripped the phone.
“What is it?”
“A keycard.”
“For where?”
“There’s a name printed on it.”
“Tell me.”
Adrian answered.
“Evelyn Mercer Women’s Foundation.”
Dante frowned.
His mother had never had a foundation.
At least not one he knew about.
Adrian added, “Dante, there’s an address.”
“Where?”
“Manhattan.”
Dante looked out at the dark lake.
For fifteen years, Lucia had hidden clues inside objects Dante saw every day.
A photograph.
A piano.
A box.
It was as if she had spent years preparing for a day when her brother might finally become ready to question everything.
And now someone else knew he had started.
Rosa appeared beside him.
“What happens next?”
Dante looked toward Ellie, still coloring at the table.
“Tomorrow we go to Manhattan.”
“To this foundation?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think we’ll find?”
Dante’s expression hardened.
“The truth about my mother.”
He did not yet understand that the foundation held something far more dangerous than records.
Behind one locked door was evidence proving Lucia Mercer had not been the first woman in Dante’s family to disappear.
May you like
His mother had tried to expose Sebastian too.
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