Chapter 7
Three vehicles entered the outer property.
No headlights.
No invitation.
Voss men.
My guards closed the inner gate before they reached the mansion.
Grant laughed.
“You think that stops anything?”
I looked at him.
“What were they expecting?”
Silence.
Vanessa leaned against the pantry shelves.
Calm returning.
“They weren’t here for you.”
Maria’s face changed.
I noticed.
“For whom?”
No answer.
Then Sophia whispered:
“Mommy.”
Maria grabbed her daughter.
I looked at Vanessa.
Her smile confirmed it.
The vehicles were here for Maria.
I raised my radio.
“Take them alive.”
Grant scoffed.
“Always dramatic.”
I ignored him.
Within six minutes, my men dragged one Voss courier into the service hallway.
He saw Grant.
Then Vanessa.
Then Maria.
“Wrong night.”
I stared.
“What was supposed to happen?”
He said nothing.
Grant smiled at him.
“Stay quiet.”
I looked at the courier.
“You work for Grant?”
“No.”
“Voss?”
Silence.
Sophia began eating another piece of bread.
The courier looked at her.
Then Maria.
Something like shame crossed his face.
Good.
“What were you told?”
He exhaled.
“Collect the housekeeper.”
Maria tightened around Sophia.
“And the child?”
He hesitated.
Vanessa answered.
“She wasn’t supposed to be here.”
I turned.
“What?”
Vanessa smiled.
“She was supposed to be asleep.”
“Hungry.”
“Same result.”
Maria stared at her.
“You starved my daughter so she would be too weak to follow me?”
Vanessa rolled her eyes.
“She wasn’t dying.”
Sophia froze again.
I looked at her.
“Eat.”
She did.
The courier finally spoke.
“Maria was supposed to be taken to the west cottage.”
“Why?”
“To ask where Luis’s phone was.”
Grant cursed.
Vanessa closed her eyes.
There.
The phone.
They had spent eight months looking.
Maria hadn’t known.
Sophia did.
And the child had paid for that secret with five days of hunger.
I looked at Grant.
“What happened after they got the phone?”
The courier answered before he could.
“Maria wasn’t coming back.”
Maria’s knees nearly failed.
Grant smiled coldly.
“If she had told us where it was Monday, Sophia could’ve eaten every meal.”
My body went still.
May you like
He believed that made the cruelty Maria’s fault.
And that was the moment every man in my kitchen understood Grant Cole had just confessed without realizing it.
