CHAPTER 3 — THE LOCKED GATES
“Seal the property,” Emily ordered.
Preston laughed bitterly.
“You don’t give orders here.”
Emily faced him.
“I own the house, the land, and the security company protecting it.”
Nora turned to the head of security.
“Lock every gate.”
Within seconds, steel barriers lowered across the estate’s entrances.
Security teams spread through the hallways and gardens.
Vanessa could not have gone far.
Daniel examined the table.
The clear evidence bag remained, but the phone was missing.
“She knew exactly what she was taking,” he said.
Preston folded his arms.
“Maybe your investigators staged this entire performance.”
Emily ignored him.
She was studying the dark hallway behind the ballroom.
Vanessa had vanished during a blackout that lasted less than thirty seconds.
She could not have escaped without help.
A security guard approached.
“Mrs. Vale, the outage was deliberate. Someone disabled the main control system from inside the house.”
“Who has access?”
The guard looked uncomfortable.
“Mr. Vale. Mrs. Lydia Vale. And the estate manager.”
The estate manager, Thomas Reed, had served Emily’s father for twelve years.
He had also disappeared from the ballroom.
Emily felt a tightening across her stomach.
Nora noticed.
“You need to sit down.”
“I’m fine.”
“You are eight months pregnant.”
“And my husband may have been involved in my father’s death.”
Preston’s expression sharpened.
“Be careful.”
Emily stepped closer.
“You forced me to kneel while your mistress humiliated me in front of hundreds of people. You lost the right to warn me.”
A radio crackled at the guard’s shoulder.
They had found Thomas in the west corridor.
He was unconscious beside the electrical control room.
A deep cut marked the side of his head.
Clutched in his hand was a torn piece of Vanessa’s red dress.
Emily, Nora, and Daniel hurried through the mansion.
Preston and Lydia followed under guard.
Thomas opened his eyes as they reached him.
“She took the service passage,” he whispered.
“Where does it lead?” Daniel asked.
“The old wine cellar.”
Emily knew the cellar had an exterior tunnel once used by staff during major events. Her father had sealed it years ago.
Or claimed he had.
Security officers entered first.
They found Vanessa crouched behind a storage rack.
She was holding the stolen phone against her chest.
A man in medical scrubs lay beside her.
He was bleeding from the shoulder but conscious.
Daniel recognized him from the missing-person file.
“Grace Miller?”
The person looked up.
It was not Grace.
It was her younger brother, Caleb.
Vanessa raised both hands.
“I didn’t take the phone to destroy it,” she said. “I took it because Preston was going to kill me for what was on it.”
Preston shouted from the doorway.
“She’s lying!”
Caleb struggled to sit up.
“He found us this morning,” Vanessa continued. “Grace has been hiding for months. She gave Caleb a recording before she disappeared again.”
“What recording?” Emily asked.
Caleb pointed to the phone.
“Your father’s last conversation.”
Daniel carefully activated the device.
Arthur Hale’s weak voice filled the cellar.
“If anything happens to me, Preston must never gain control of Emily’s trust.”
Then another voice spoke.
A woman’s voice.
Calm. Familiar.
“You should have signed the transfer when Lydia asked.”
Emily slowly turned toward her mother-in-law.
Lydia’s face had become completely expressionless.
The recording continued.
Arthur coughed.
“You poisoned your own daughter-in-law’s marriage to get near my company.”
Lydia stepped toward the phone.
“Turn it off.”
Security blocked her.
Then came Arthur’s final words.
“You made one mistake, Lydia. Emily knows where I hid the original ledger.”
Emily froze.
She had no idea what he meant.
But Lydia looked directly at her.
May you like
And smiled.
“You don’t even know what your father left you,” she whispered. “That means we still have time to find it first.”
