Chapter 1
“You found my daughter and locked her up. Why?”
Derek stopped moving beside the fallen garment bags.
Camille was still pinned against the worktable beneath my hand, both wrists kept well away from the scissors.
Neither answered.
That was enough to tell me the question mattered.
Henry stood beside my bodyguard clutching Violet’s stuffed rabbit against his chest.
One ear missing.
The other bent beneath his fingers.
I looked at my son.
“Where is Violet now?”
He swallowed.
“I don’t know.”
My stomach tightened.
“You said you let her out.”
“I did.”
“From where?”
Henry pointed toward the far side of the sewing room.
Not the hallway.
Not the closet.
The wall.
Camille went still.
Interesting.
I released her only after Rafe took her place.
Then I walked toward the paneled wall behind the garment rack.
At first, nothing.
Fabric bolts.
Old hooks.
A decorative wooden molding strip.
Henry approached slowly.
“She was in there.”
He pressed one small finger beneath the molding.
Click.
A narrow section of wall shifted inward.
Hidden door.
My blood went cold.
I opened it.
Behind the sewing room was a shallow service passage barely four feet wide.
Old.
Dusty.
Built when the estate still used servant corridors.
At the far end stood a small storage room.
Door open.
Inside:
A child-sized blanket.
An empty juice box.
One shoe belonging to Violet.
And a red crayon drawing on the floor.
I picked it up.
Three figures.
One small.
Two large.
A black square between them.
Henry whispered:
“She saw Aunt Camille put something in the wall.”
Camille shouted:
“He’s lying.”
I slowly turned.
My six-year-old son flinched before she even finished.
That told me what kind of week he had been living through.
I walked back.
“What did Violet see?”
No answer.
Then Henry held out the damaged rabbit.
“She put it in Bunny.”
Camille’s face changed.
I took the toy carefully.
The torn ear exposed white stuffing.
And something harder beneath it.
Plastic.
Flat.
Hidden inside the rabbit was a small black memory card.
Derek closed his eyes.
May you like
My daughter had not been locked away because she wandered somewhere forbidden.
She had found something two adults were willing to terrify children to recover.
