Chapter 3 - The Man Who Found Her
“Beatrice.”
She froze.
The voice was female.
“Beatrice, please.”
She grabbed the heavy lamp.
The door opened.
A woman in medical scrubs stood there.
The physician from the clinic.
“Don’t scream.”
Beatrice raised the lamp.
“You have five seconds.”
The doctor held up both hands.
“Someone accessed the clinic records.”
“What?”
“They knew you were there.”
Footsteps thundered downstairs.
The doctor flinched.
Adrian appeared behind her with two security men.
“What happened?”
She explained.
Adrian’s face hardened.
Within minutes the house was locked down.
Beatrice was moved to an interior study.
Adrian entered alone.
“You need another location.”
“Your house was compromised in four hours.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t seem surprised.”
“I’m furious. Different emotion.”
“Who knew?”
“Six people.”
“And now?”
“Five are being questioned.”
Beatrice studied him.
“What happens to the sixth?”
“Nothing until I know facts.”
That answer mattered.
She sat.
Adrian remained standing.
“Your sister contacted Rossi last night.”
Beatrice’s jaw tightened.
“Of course she did.”
“She told him someone hired her.”
Beatrice looked up.
Adrian placed a printed photograph on the desk.
Her.
Sleeping.
“This was sent to Chloe.”
Beatrice’s skin went cold.
“Someone was in my room?”
“Possibly. Or accessed the camera system.”
“You said there were no cameras.”
“There aren’t.”
“Then how?”
“We’re determining that.”
Beatrice stared at the photograph.
The angle.
Something bothered her.
Then she realized.
“That wasn’t taken here.”
Adrian leaned closer.
“What?”
She pointed.
“The blanket.”
He looked.
“The blanket here is gray.”
In the photograph, it was cream.
Beatrice stared harder.
“That’s the Rossi mansion.”
Adrian understood.
Someone had photographed her asleep long before she escaped.
Perhaps weeks earlier.
Perhaps months.
The threat had begun before Chloe’s kiss.
By noon, Adrian moved her to another property.
This time Beatrice demanded to know the destination.
He told her.
She demanded her own phone.
He provided one.
She demanded access to the security system.
He hesitated.
Then gave it.
“You’re difficult,” he said.
“I’m learning.”
“Good.”
That evening, Beatrice finally asked the question that had bothered her since the highway.
“Why were you on that road?”
Adrian looked at her.
“Coincidence.”
“I married Gabriel Rossi. I no longer believe in coincidence.”
He considered lying.
She could see it.
Then he opened a drawer.
Inside was an old photograph.
A younger Adrian.
Another man.
Beatrice picked it up.
Her breath stopped.
The second man was her father.
Thomas Bell.
“You knew him?”
“Very well.”
“My father disappeared eighteen years ago.”
“I know.”
Beatrice stood.
“What do you mean, you know?”
Adrian’s expression changed.
“Your father saved my life.”
“When?”
“Eighteen years ago.”
The room became silent.
“What happened to him?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“No. But it’s true.”
Adrian told her Thomas had worked as an accountant for several businesses tied to organized crime.
He had discovered money moving through shell companies.
Not thousands.
Hundreds of millions.
Thomas tried to expose it.
Then vanished.
Adrian had been twenty.
His father had been killed that same year.
Their deaths—or disappearances—had helped trigger the feud between the Vale and Rossi organizations.
“Gabriel knows?”
“He knows part of it.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
Beatrice felt sick.
Her marriage suddenly seemed less accidental.
“Did Gabriel marry me because of my father?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Can’t.”
She turned away.
Her phone rang.
Gabriel.
Adrian made no move to stop her.
She answered.
“Did you know my father?”
Silence.
That was enough.
“Gabriel.”
“Yes.”
Her knees weakened.
“How?”
“Beatrice, come home.”
“No.”
“I’ll explain everything.”
“Explain now.”
“Not over a phone.”
“You had four years.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
She laughed once.
“Men keep saying that right before telling women what they weren’t allowed to know.”
“Vale is manipulating you.”
“He showed me a photograph.”
Gabriel went silent again.
“You knew Adrian knew my father.”
“Yes.”
“Did you marry me because of Thomas Bell?”
“No.”
The answer came instantly.
Beatrice wanted desperately to believe it.
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because your father didn’t simply disappear.”
Her heart stopped.
“What does that mean?”
Gabriel breathed out.
“He left something behind.”
“What?”
“A ledger.”
Adrian’s eyes sharpened from across the room.
Gabriel continued.
“People have been looking for it for eighteen years.”
“Why would I have it?”
“They think Thomas gave you the key.”
“I was eleven.”
“They don’t care.”
Beatrice remembered the number on the pharmacy receipt.
She had written it months ago because it was the number of the greenhouse camera.
Nothing more.
But suddenly another memory surfaced.
Her father.
A rainy afternoon.
A brass music box.
Seventeen.
Her father had made her repeat the number.
She had forgotten.
Until now.
“Beatrice?” Gabriel said.
She did not answer.
She crossed to her duffel.
Inside her identification folder was an old photograph she carried everywhere.
Her mother.
Her father.
Eleven-year-old Beatrice.
Behind them stood a railway station.
Locker doors covered the wall.
One number was visible directly above Thomas Bell’s shoulder.
Beatrice turned the photograph over.
Words had been written in her father’s handwriting.
WHEN YOU HAVE SOMEONE WORTH PROTECTING, YOU’LL UNDERSTAND.
Adrian stared at it.
Gabriel was still on the phone.
“What did you find?”
Beatrice ended the call.
Adrian said quietly, “That station was demolished fifteen years ago.”
“Then the locker is gone.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because the lockers were moved.”
“Where?”
Adrian looked at the photograph.
“To a private storage archive.”
Beatrice felt the baby move.
“Who owns it?”
Adrian met her eyes.
“The Rossi family.”
Hours later, Gabriel entered the mansion archive alone.
He found locker seventeen.
The lock had already been broken.
Inside sat a single black box.
Gabriel reached for it.
May you like
Then he heard a gun being cocked behind him.
And a familiar voice said, “Don’t touch what belongs to your wife.”
