Chapter 6 - The Camera Behind the Wine Cellar
I answered.
"Mom?"
Silence.
Then breathing.
A man's voice said, "Come alone."
The call ended.
I was already moving.
Cassian caught my arm.
"No."
"That's my mother."
"Which is exactly why you aren't going alone."
Elm Grove was forty minutes away.
We made it in twenty-six.
My mother's room was empty.
Bed unmade.
Wheelchair gone.
The night nurse insisted a physician had authorized a transfer.
"What physician?"
She checked.
Her face changed.
"Dr. Adrian Bell."
Ezra cursed.
Bellwether.
Security footage showed my mother leaving at 3:14 a.m.
The man pushing her wheelchair kept his face turned away.
But I recognized his gait.
Vittorio.
Cassian called every Raldi property.
Nothing.
Then Odette called.
"Wine cellar."
We returned to Lake Forest.
Behind the wine racks, Odette showed us an old camera Cassian hadn't known existed.
It recorded the basement corridor.
At 3:46 a.m., Vittorio entered.
Alone.
At 4:02, he left.
Alone.
"Where's my mother?"
Odette rewound.
Nothing.
I examined the wall.
One panel had fresh scratches.
Cassian pressed it.
A hidden elevator opened.
Below the mansion was another level.
Medical level.
A small examination room.
Refrigerated storage.
Old Bellwether equipment.
And a hospital bed.
Empty.
I found a strand of my mother's gray hair on the pillow.
Beside it was a syringe.
The label read saline.
It wasn't.
I smelled it.
Sedative.
Cassian took it from me.
"Don't touch anything else."
Then we found the archive.
Hundreds of files.
Judges.
Politicians.
Business owners.
Raldi family members.
My name.
ELENA MARSH.
My file began before I'd ever met Cassian.
"Why were they watching me?"
Ezra opened it.
Inside was my father's photograph.
Then mine.
Then my mother's.
A handwritten note:
DANIEL'S DAUGHTER — POSSIBLE ACCESS VECTOR.
I felt sick.
The marriage hadn't been random.
My debt hadn't led me to Cassian.
Someone had engineered it.
Cassian read another page.
His face changed.
"What?"
He handed it to me.
A schedule.
The night I'd saved him.
Every event was timed.
Cassian's collapse.
My arrival.
The drug in my water.
Even the room where I'd awakened.
At the bottom:
OBJECTIVE: CONCEPTION ATTEMPT.
I couldn't breathe.
Cassian looked murderous.
"Someone planned your pregnancy."
"Why?"
Ezra opened another folder.
SUCCESSION PROTOCOL.
Cassian's signature appeared on it.
Forged.
Below it was another signature.
Mine.
Also forged.
Then a third.
Dr. Adrian Bell.
I heard wheels in the corridor.
My mother's wheelchair appeared first.
Vittorio pushed it.
Mom was unconscious.
A gun rested against her shoulder.
"Nobody move."
Cassian froze.
Vittorio smiled.
"You finally found the nursery."
Then my mother's eyes opened.
For one clear second, the dementia seemed gone.
She looked directly at me.
"Elena," she whispered.
Then she looked at Cassian.
May you like
And said a name none of us expected.
"Son."
