Chapter 5 - THE EMPTY BED
The mansion felt like a tomb.
I sprinted past Maria, my legs carrying me faster than I thought possible. We tore through the long, echoing corridors of the east wing. The silence was deafening. There were no alarms, no signs of a struggle. Whoever Nathan had sent inside was a professional.
We reached the guest suite. The door was wide open.
Maria pushed past me and rushed into the room.
“Lily!” she screamed, tearing the duvet off the small bed.
The bed was empty. The sheets were still warm. Lily’s small pair of bunny slippers sat perfectly aligned by the nightstand, but the room was completely devoid of life.
Maria collapsed to her knees, clutching the empty pillow to her chest. She let out a sound—a guttural, tearing wail of pure agony that shattered whatever ice was left around my heart.
“He took her,” Maria sobbed, rocking back and forth. “Nathan took my baby.”
I stood frozen in the doorway. My mind, usually a hyper-efficient machine analyzing data and market trends, completely stalled. For the first time in my life, billion-dollar leverage meant absolutely nothing. I couldn't buy her back.
I looked at the open window. The curtains were billowing in the cold, wet wind.
I walked over to the sill. There were muddy boot prints on the white paint. The intruder had scaled the stone trellis.
But right next to the muddy print, snagged on a rogue splinter of the wood frame, was a tiny piece of gray fabric.
I plucked it loose. It was heavy, weighted cotton.
The slate-gray quilt.
Lily hadn’t just been taken. The intruder had wrapped her in the heavy quilt to muffle her cries.
My phone vibrated in my pocket.
I pulled it out. Unknown Caller.
I answered, putting it on speaker. “If you hurt one hair on her head, Nathan, I will spend every dollar I have dismantling you and everyone you’ve ever known.”
“Such passion, Daniel,” Nathan’s voice purred through the speaker. “It’s a good color on you. The Ice King finally melts.”
“Where is she?” Maria screamed from the floor, crawling toward me.
“Ah, Maria. Good to hear your voice,” Nathan said. “Your daughter is perfectly safe. For now. She’s sleeping in the backseat of a very comfortable car.”
“What do you want?” I demanded, gripping the phone so hard the glass screen groaned.
“I want the key, Daniel,” Nathan said simply.
My eyes shot to the rusted iron key still clutched in my left hand.
“I saw you take it out of the safe through the study window,” Nathan continued. “Your father’s little hunting cabin. He told me about it once, when he was drunk. He said it was where he buried his sins. I want the key, and I want you to sign over the controlling shares of Hale Meridian Group to my holding company.”
“You’re insane,” I hissed. “The board will never allow it. The SEC will flag it in minutes.”
“They’ll allow it when I release the medical records proving you’ve suffered a complete psychological breakdown,” Nathan said smoothly. “A billionaire who hasn’t left his estate in three years, suddenly signing away his company after his housekeeper manipulates him. It writes itself.”
“I’ll kill you,” I whispered.
“If you don't bring the key and the signed transfer documents to the old shipyard on Pier 42 in exactly one hour, you’ll never see the girl again,” Nathan said. “Come alone. If I see a single police cruiser or private security detail, the car with the girl in it rolls off the pier into the harbor.”
The line went dead.
I lowered the phone. Maria was staring at me, her eyes bloodshot, her face a mask of absolute desperation.
“I’ll do it,” I said without hesitation. “I’ll sign the company over. I’ll give him the key. I don’t care about the money.”
Maria stood up slowly. She walked toward me, her eyes drifting to the iron key in my hand.
“If you give him the key, he’ll kill us all,” she said, her voice eerily calm.
“I have to try,” I argued.
“No,” Maria said, shaking her head. “Nathan is a cleaner. He doesn’t leave loose ends. If he gets that key, he gets the evidence he needs to permanently cover up what he did. Once he has it, Lily and I become liabilities. And so do you.”
“Then what do we do?” I demanded.
Maria reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out the small, ornately carved wooden box she had hidden in the quilt earlier.
“Before Charles died,” Maria said, staring at the box, “he didn’t just give me the wire transfer. He told me this puzzle box had a false bottom. He said if Nathan ever backed us into a corner, the answer was inside.”
I stared at the box. “I tried to open the false bottom earlier. It’s jammed.”
“It’s not jammed,” Maria said, holding it out to me. “Look at the lock mechanism.”
I took the box. I looked closely at the tiny brass keyhole on the underside. It wasn’t a standard lock. It was jagged, uneven.
I looked down at the rusted iron key in my left hand—the key to the hunting cabin.
The teeth matched perfectly.
The key wasn’t for a cabin in Vermont. My father had lied to me to keep it safe.
I slid the iron key into the bottom of the wooden box and turned it.
Click.
The false bottom dropped open into my palm.
Inside was a single, tiny, encrypted flash drive, and a handwritten note on my father’s stationary.
I unfolded the note.
“Daniel. If you are reading this, I am dead, and Nathan has come for the girl. He isn’t after my money. He is after the drive. The files on this drive don’t just prove Nathan framed David Torres. They prove who Lily’s real father is.”
I stopped reading. The air in the room seemed to vanish.
I looked up at Maria. Her face was completely unreadable.
“Maria,” I whispered. “What does this mean?”
“Keep reading,” she choked out.
May you like
I looked back down at the final line of my father’s letter.
“Lily is not David’s daughter. She is yours.”
