Chapter 2
Connor had recorded twelve minutes.
I watched all twelve.
Grace sat at the breakfast table.
No food.
Diane sat opposite her.
Sabrina stood by the window.
“Which car does Mommy take after dark?”
Grace whispered:
“I don’t know.”
Sabrina laughed.
“Wrong answer.”
Grace rubbed her stomach.
“I’m hungry.”
Diane leaned back.
“You eat when I permit it.”
I paused the video.
“You withheld breakfast?”
Diane rolled her eyes.
“For fifteen minutes.”
“She’s three.”
“And?”
That one word told me everything about her.
I resumed.
Grace pointed toward the driveway.
“The black car.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know.”
Sabrina pulled the plate farther away.
“Good girls answer. Difficult girls watch everyone else eat.”
Grace began crying.
“I want Mommy.”
Diane smiled.
“Call her. She isn’t coming.”
My daughter’s face crumpled.
I stopped the recording again.
Sabrina wiped blood from her lip.
“Don’t pretend she was starving.”
“You used food to make her talk.”
“She needed motivation.”
The recording continued.
Diane asked which guard slept near my stairs.
Which entrance I used after midnight.
Which nights I went to Rose Gate.
My blood went cold.
Rose Gate was a private entrance used only by senior Whitfield leadership.
It was also where my husband Daniel died two years earlier.
Grace had been born after his death.
She should not even know the name.
Then another voice appeared on the recording.
Male.
Older.
Off-camera.
“Has Natalie changed the Thursday route?”
Sabrina answered:
“No.”
Diane added:
“She’s sentimental. She still uses the same gate Daniel did.”
I froze.
Connor stopped the video.
Diane immediately looked at him.
“You little spy.”
He stepped behind me.
She smiled.
“Ten years old and hiding behind furniture with a tablet. Your father would be embarrassed.”
Connor’s eyes filled.
Sabrina said nothing.
That hurt him more.
I looked at Diane.
“Who was the man?”
“No idea.”
Connor whispered:
“I saw his hand.”
“What was on it?”
“A bird ring.”
One of my older capos spoke.
“Elias Crane.”
My mother’s former security chief.
Officially retired.
Still feared.
I looked at Diane.
“You brought Elias into my house.”
She crossed her arms.
“It was my house first.”
“No.”
Her expression hardened.
Then Grace whispered against my shoulder:
“Grandma said Daddy stopped being difficult after Rose Gate.”
Every conversation in the garden died.
May you like
I looked down at my daughter.
“How does she know where Daniel died?”
