Chapter 6
The bracelet came from an aquarium in Santa Barbara.
Cassandro found the gift shop record through an old family credit-card statement.
Vivienne purchased four children’s waterproof bracelets the morning Elena disappeared.
One was green.
Audrey’s.
Cassandro confronted her.
Vivienne looked exhausted now.
“Elena asked me to.”
“Why?”
“She wanted Audrey to think they were going on a trip.”
Cassandro felt his jaw tighten.
“She planned to take Audrey?”
“Yes.”
That contradicted Elena’s final message.
Audrey is safer where she is for now.
Vivienne continued.
“Elena changed her mind.”
“When?”
“That afternoon.”
“Why?”
Vivienne looked toward the window.
“Because she was afraid you'd follow.”
Cassandro said nothing.
That was plausible.
Painfully plausible.
Then Vivienne admitted something she had hidden for fourteen months.
Elena did leave the estate planning to take Audrey.
But Vivienne convinced her not to.
“You told her to leave her child?”
“For one night.”
“Why?”
“Because you would've known immediately if Audrey disappeared.”
Vivienne said Elena intended to reach Santa Barbara first, call Cassandro, and arrange for Audrey to be brought later.
It sounded complicated.
It also sounded like frightened people trying to avoid confrontation.
Cassandro hated how believable it was.
“What did Elena mean when she said I didn't send something?”
Vivienne stopped.
“I don't know.”
Cassandro watched her.
She knew.
He could see it.
But forcing her would not produce reliable truth.
He walked away.
Then his attorney delivered a new discovery.
The phone message Elena sent the night she vanished had not originated from Santa Barbara.
It had been queued through the Moretti estate’s private messaging server before her phone left Los Angeles County.
That did not prove who wrote it.
But it meant someone with access to the family’s communications system might have scheduled it.
Damian administered that system.
Vivienne knew the household passwords.
Cassandro looked again at the sentence he had believed for fourteen months.
May you like
Don't follow me.
For the first time, he considered the possibility that Elena never sent it at all.
