CHAPTER 3 — The Locked Nursery
Emily’s father had died after falling from the balcony of his Manhattan office.
The death had been ruled an accident.
Victor had always told Emily that he first met her six months later at a charity dinner.
The photograph proved he had lied.
Detective Laura Bennett studied it beneath the library lamp.
“Do you recognize the building?” she asked.
Emily nodded.
“My father’s office.”
“And the man beside your husband?”
“My father’s business attorney, Harold Grant.”
Detective Bennett’s expression changed.
“Harold Grant disappeared four months ago.”
Emily stared at her.
Victor had told her Harold retired and moved overseas.
Another lie.
The officers searched Victor’s office and found forged signatures, multiple passports, and bank records connected to accounts in the Cayman Islands.
Yet they found no sign of where he had gone.
Elena examined the office wall.
“There used to be a door here.”
Emily looked at the wood paneling.
“How do you know?”
“I saw Victor enter it once.”
Thomas had installed modern security throughout the mansion, but the house itself was more than a century old. It contained servant corridors, hidden storage rooms, and passageways built during Prohibition.
One officer pressed against the panel.
A narrow door opened.
The passage beyond smelled of dust and cold stone.
Emily insisted on going with them.
At the end of the passage, they found a locked room.
Inside was a nursery.
A wooden crib stood beneath yellowed wallpaper. Two names had been carved into the headboard:
EMILY
ELENA
Emily’s knees nearly gave out.
“This was our nursery.”
Elena approached a shelf filled with old toys.
Behind a cracked music box, she discovered a leather journal.
It belonged to their mother.
The first pages described the twins’ birth.
The later entries became desperate.
Charles says one child must be hidden. He believes someone inside the company is selling information.
Another entry read:
They took Elena tonight. Charles refuses to call the police. He says the men who took her work for someone we trust.
The final page had been written the night before their mother died.
I know who ordered it. His name is—
The rest of the page had been cut away.
Detective Bennett examined the binding.
“This page was removed recently.”
Emily turned toward the doorway.
Only a few people had known about the hidden passage.
Victor was one of them.
Then Elena noticed a red light blinking beneath the crib.
She reached down and found a small wireless camera.
The device was still transmitting.
Victor had been watching them.
A speaker hidden in the ceiling suddenly crackled.
Victor’s voice filled the nursery.
“You found the room,” he said calmly. “Now let’s see whether you survive long enough to leave it.”
May you like
The steel door slammed shut behind them.
A moment later, smoke began pouring through the air vent.
