Chapter 3 - Someone Wants the Child Dead
The hospital security footage showed the man entering through the service elevator at 9:18 p.m.
He wore a medical mask, carried a clipboard, and moved with the confidence of someone who knew exactly where he was going.
At 9:26, he attempted to access Lily's room.
At 9:27, he disappeared from every camera in the eastern corridor.
Marcus arrived with four trusted men. Within twenty minutes, the hospital had secured the pediatric floor, and local police were reviewing the footage.
I stayed beside Lily's bed.
Her fever had begun to fall, but every time a nurse entered, Hannah flinched.
“How long has Celeste been threatening you?” I asked.
“Since Lily was six months old.”
“And you never went to the police?”
“She showed me photographs of men outside my apartment. She knew where my mother lived. She even knew which daycare Lily attended before I pulled her out.”
I felt something inside me turn dangerously still.
Celeste had not simply bullied an employee.
She had built a cage around a mother and child.
Hannah reached into her purse and removed a small envelope.
“Nicholas gave me this the week before he died. He told me to open it only if something happened to him.”
Inside was a key and a handwritten note.
If Lily is ever in danger, find the blue room beneath the old Whitaker warehouse. Trust no one who wears my family ring.
I read the last sentence twice.
My family ring was not unique. Nicholas had owned one, I owned another, and my father had commissioned identical rings for several senior members of our inner circle.
But the note meant someone wearing one of those rings had been involved in his death.
I called Marcus.
“Find the warehouse. Quietly.”
He paused.
“Which warehouse, boss?”
“The original one on the river.”
His answer came too quickly.
“That building burned down six years ago.”
“Who ordered the demolition?”
Another pause.
“Your father.”
My father had been dead for eight years.
The warehouse had burned two years before Nicholas died.
And according to the official report, the fire had destroyed every record inside.
I turned the key over in my palm.
A tiny inscription was engraved along its edge.
ROOM 17.
Then Hannah whispered something that made the blood drain from my face.
“Nicholas told me the room wasn't under the warehouse.”
May you like
She looked toward Lily's sleeping form.
“He said it was under your childhood home.”
