Chapter 6 - Clara’s Missing Forty-Seven Minutes
“Mom?”
The word escaped Clara before reason could stop it.
Dominic put the call on speaker.
Silence.
Then the woman spoke.
“You kept the glasses.”
Clara stopped breathing.
Nobody understood.
Nobody except her.
When Clara was twelve, she had hated her first pair of glasses. Evelyn had told her that seeing clearly was worth looking different.
Clara still wore nearly the same frames.
“Who are you?”
“You know.”
“My mother is dead.”
“That was necessary.”
Clara gripped the desk.
Dominic moved beside her.
“Where are you?”
The woman ignored him.
“Clara, listen carefully. You have forty-seven minutes missing from your memory.”
Clara frowned.
“What?”
“The night Isabella died.”
“I was five.”
“You were there.”
The line went dead.
Clara sank into the chair.
Dominic immediately ordered the call traced.
Nothing.
Vincent watched her.
“You said you didn’t remember being at the hotel.”
“I don’t.”
Forty-seven minutes.
Why that precise number?
They returned to Room 814.
Clara stood where the photograph had been taken.
Nothing.
Then she smelled something.
Lavender.
A memory struck.
Her mother’s coat.
A woman crying.
A man shouting.
Little Clara hiding beneath a desk.
She staggered.
Dominic caught her.
“What did you see?”
“My mother.”
“What else?”
“Your father.”
Vincent stepped closer.
Clara closed her eyes.
Another fragment.
Isabella kneeling before her.
Pressing something into Clara’s hand.
“Keep this safe.”
Then shouting.
A glass breaking.
A clock.
10:13.
Clara opened her eyes.
“I was here.”
They found the old floor plan.
Room 814 once contained a wall safe.
It had been removed.
Or appeared to have been.
Dominic located the hidden latch.
Inside sat a child’s red purse.
Clara recognized it.
She began crying before she touched it.
“My mother bought this for my fifth birthday.”
Inside was a plastic bracelet.
Two crayons.
And a folded sheet of paper covered in childish numbers.
Vincent stared.
“What is that?”
Clara laughed through tears.
“My mother taught me number games.”
She studied the page.
The random digits weren’t random.
They were an account cipher.
Evelyn had hidden information in her daughter’s homework.
Clara decoded it.
Coordinates.
A storage facility.
Locker 47.
Inside they found boxes belonging to Evelyn.
Clothes.
Photographs.
Passports.
And dozens of cassette tapes.
One was labeled:
CLARA — IF I FAIL.
Clara pressed play.
Her mother’s voice filled the small unit.
“Baby, if you’re hearing this, I’m sorry.”
Clara covered her mouth.
“I helped Isabella build the ledger. I also betrayed her.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
“I told Salvatore she was gathering evidence because he threatened you. I thought I could control what happened next.”
Evelyn began crying on the recording.
“I was wrong.”
Clara closed her eyes.
“Isabella died because of information I gave him.”
Vincent turned away.
Dominic remained beside Clara.
“But Enzo forgave me. He said guilt would not protect our children. Evidence would.”
A pause.
“So we continued.”
Clara opened her eyes.
Her mother had not run from the truth.
She had spent years collecting it.
The tape continued.
“Salvatore has someone above him. Someone Isabella never identified. We call him the Kingmaker.”
Tommy looked at Dominic.
The nickname was familiar.
Chicago had whispered it for decades.
A person who supposedly chose judges, financed campaigns, destroyed investigations, and remained invisible.
Clara leaned toward the recorder.
“Who?”
Evelyn’s voice lowered.
“I finally learned his name.”
The tape clicked.
Stopped.
Someone had cut the recording.
Then a phone began ringing inside one of the boxes.
A phone that could not possibly have been there for nineteen years.
Dominic answered.
A text appeared instead.
COME HOME, CLARA.
Below it was a photograph taken seconds earlier.
May you like
It showed Clara standing inside the storage unit.
The photographer was behind them.
