CHAPTER 3: THE WOMAN WHO VANISHED
I left the hospital against medical advice two days later.
My father argued.
The doctors argued.
Even the security officers assigned to my room tried to convince me to remain.
But Celeste was gone.
Daniel had vanished.
And Nathan was already appearing on television, presenting himself as a loyal husband whose emotionally troubled wife had falsely accused him.
He wore a dark blue suit and a carefully wounded expression.
“I love Evelyn,” he told the cameras. “I hope she receives the help she needs.”
I watched the interview from the back seat of my father’s SUV.
Nathan had always been talented at pretending.
This time, however, I knew where the mask ended.
We returned to Blackthorn Manor before noon.
The grand hall had been sealed as a crime scene. Evidence markers covered the polished floor.
The white leather armchair was empty.
The champagne glass was gone.
My father’s investigators searched Nathan’s office while I moved slowly through the house.
I reached our bedroom.
My clothes remained in the closet, arranged exactly as they had been before Nathan forced me downstairs.
Celeste’s belongings occupied the drawers beside mine.
She had not merely entered my marriage.
She had been preparing to replace me.
I opened the bottom drawer and found a leather jewelry case.
Inside was a silver key.
A number had been engraved into the metal.
B-17.
Blackthorn Manor had no room labeled B-17.
But the estate had been constructed over the foundation of an older mansion.
I took the key to the library.
Behind a row of antique books, I found a narrow control panel. The key fit into a hidden slot.
A section of the wall unlocked.
A staircase descended into darkness.
I called my security team before entering.
The underground room contained computers, financial documents, fake passports, and photographs of my father taken over the last fifteen years.
Nathan had been monitoring him long before we met.
On one wall hung a photograph of my mother.
She stood outside a courthouse beside a younger Elias Vale.
A third person stood with them.
Victor Monroe.
Celeste’s father.
According to public records, Victor had died twenty years earlier.
But someone had recently written a message across the bottom of the photograph.
ELIAS STOLE EVERYTHING.
One of my father’s investigators entered behind me.
“Ms. Vale, you need to see this.”
He opened a file found on the main desk.
Inside was a copy of my marriage certificate.
Attached to it was an old contract signed by Nathan’s father and Victor Monroe.
The agreement promised the Ashford family control of Vale Dominion if Nathan ever legally acquired my voting shares.
My marriage had never been about love.
Nathan had been selected.
Prepared.
Placed in my path.
My phone rang.
The number was blocked.
I answered without speaking.
Celeste’s voice came through in a frightened whisper.
“Evelyn, I don’t have much time.”
“Where are you?”
“Your cousin is not the person in charge.”
“Who is?”
A man spoke in the background.
Celeste inhaled sharply.
Then she hurriedly said, “Your mother didn’t die in an accident.”
The call ended.
I stood motionless in the hidden room.
My mother had died when I was twelve.
Her car had gone off a mountain road during a storm.
My father had always said the road conditions caused the crash.
I turned toward him as he entered the room.
He saw the photograph in my hand.
And for the second time in two days, Elias Vale looked afraid of his own daughter.
“You knew,” I said.
My father closed the door behind him.
“Yes.”
“Who killed her?”
May you like
He looked at Victor Monroe’s face in the photograph.
“The man everyone believes is dead.”
