Chapter 11 - The Night Selena Disappeared
The warning came from Celia.
She emerged through another corridor, injured but alive.
Victor had kidnapped her after she left the mansion.
The hidden room was rigged.
Dempster’s team disarmed the device.
Inside they found the witness.
Gabriel Flores’s former driver, Thomas Vale.
He had disappeared eleven years earlier.
Everyone assumed he was dead.
Thomas had watched Victor sabotage Marianne’s vehicle.
He had also watched Charles Wright pay him.
But there was more.
Gabriel had recorded Victor confessing.
Thomas knew where the recording was.
“In Dempster’s mother’s ring.”
Selena stared at her hand.
The emerald.
Dempster carefully removed the ring.
A jeweler on his security team opened the hidden compartment beneath the stone.
Micro-storage.
Tiny.
Old.
But intact.
The recording was devastating.
Victor’s voice.
Charles’s voice.
Dates.
Payments.
Marianne’s name.
Everything.
They contacted federal investigators through an attorney outside Meridian’s influence.
For the first time, the network faced real collapse.
Then Selena disappeared.
Not through kidnapping.
By choice.
She left Dempster a note.
I need one day where nobody protects me, owns me, follows me, or decides for me. Please trust me enough to let me have it.
Dempster did.
It nearly destroyed him.
Selena returned to Queens.
Her apartment.
Her old life.
She stood before the mirror Alidoro had taught her to hate.
She saw her body.
Soft.
Strong.
Real.
Hers.
She put on jeans.
Ordered pizza.
Called Brooke.
Then she cried.
Not because she wanted Alidoro.
Because she finally understood how thoroughly he had taught her to disappear.
Her phone rang.
Dempster.
He did not ask where she was.
“Are you safe?”
“Yes.”
“Do you need me?”
Selena looked at herself.
“Tomorrow.”
“I’ll be there.”
No demand.
No guilt.
She closed her eyes.
“Dempster?”
“Yes?”
“I miss you.”
A pause.
“I miss you too.”
After hanging up, Selena opened her laptop.
She wanted to recover her original algorithm.
Instead she found a remote connection active.
Someone had entered her apartment network.
Then the lights died.
Selena stood.
A floorboard creaked.
She reached for the pepper spray in her drawer.
Her apartment door slowly opened.
A man stepped inside.
Victor Flores smiled.
May you like
“Your husband trusted you,” he said.
“That was his mistake.”
