Chapter 7 - Vivian Comes Back
Dominic reached the hallway first.
Emma was safe.
A window had shattered.
A stone lay on the floor beside her.
Wrapped around it was a note.
SECOND KEY. MIDNIGHT. COME ALONE.
Sophia pulled Emma into her arms.
Dominic read it twice.
“No.”
Sophia looked at him.
“What?”
“We don’t give him anything.”
“He threatened my daughter.”
“And giving him the key tells him threats work.”
“Then what do we do?”
Dominic looked toward the broken window.
“We make him believe they worked.”
Vivian returned from the hospital against medical advice.
Her shoulder was bandaged.
Her pride appeared more injured.
“I know where Rafael will take the key.”
Dominic’s expression remained cold.
“You should be in a hospital.”
“And you should have married someone less terrible.”
Emma looked up.
“Are you still mean?”
Vivian stared at her.
Sophia almost intervened.
Vivian crouched painfully.
“Yes.”
Emma considered this.
“Can you stop?”
Vivian’s eyes filled.
“I’m trying.”
It was the first apology she knew how to make.
At midnight Dominic carried a fake key to the meeting point.
Sophia watched remotely.
Rafael never appeared.
Instead, a speaker activated.
“You always did follow rules, Dom.”
Dominic looked around.
“What do you want?”
“The ledger.”
“You want your key.”
“I already have what I need.”
Dominic froze.
At the mansion, Sophia heard glass break upstairs.
She ran.
Emma’s room was empty.
The window stood open.
But Emma had not been taken.
She was hiding beneath the bed.
“Mommy, the bad man wanted Mr. Hops.”
Sophia looked toward the floor.
The rabbit was gone.
Rafael had stolen it.
Dominic returned twenty minutes later.
When he heard, he went pale.
“There was nothing else inside it.”
Sophia remembered James’s phrase.
The rabbit is only the first key.
“Unless we missed something.”
Vivian examined photographs of the toy.
“The eyes.”
Sophia looked at her.
“What?”
“One eye is darker.”
Mr. Hops had two plastic eyes.
One brown.
One almost black.
A camera.
James had hidden a micro-storage device inside the rabbit’s eye.
And now Rafael had it.
Dominic called every man he trusted.
Then stopped.
James’s warning returned.
The traitor sits at Dominic Moretti’s table.
Who could he trust?
His phone vibrated.
A photograph arrived.
Mr. Hops sat on a metal table.
Behind it stood Mrs. Costa, tied to a chair.
Below the image:
BRING SOPHIA BENNETT TO PIER 17.
ALONE.
Then another message arrived.
This one contained only four words.
May you like
ASK HER WHO JAMES WAS.
Dominic slowly turned toward Sophia.
