Chapter 4 - THE ARREST
“Hands behind your back, miss.”
The police officer’s voice echoed off the marble walls of the foyer.
I stood frozen on the stairs, staring down at the swarm of blue uniforms.
Adrian stepped in front of me, shielding my body with his.
“No one is touching her,” Adrian’s voice was lethal. It wasn’t a request. It was a command that commanded the entire room to stop.
The lead detective, a man with tired eyes, sighed.
“Mr. Romano, we have a signed statement from your fiancée. And we found the stolen property.”
“Found it where?” Adrian demanded.
The detective held up a clear plastic evidence bag.
Inside was a massive diamond necklace.
“In the employee locker room. Stuffed inside Ms. Reed’s winter coat.”
My stomach violently dropped.
The coat.
The same pocket where I had found the child’s drawing.
Camille hadn’t just come to the locker room to fire me. She had come to plant the necklace.
“She’s lying!” I shouted, my voice cracking painfully.
Camille clutched the lapels of her coat, looking perfectly distraught.
“Adrian, please,” she whimpered. “She attacked me when I confronted her about it. Look at my wrist.”
She held up her arm.
Faint red marks circled her delicate wrist.
Marks she had undoubtedly given herself.
“This is a setup,” Adrian said coldly. “Evan.”
Evan stepped out from the shadows near the library doors, six massive security guards flanking him.
The police officers instinctively reached for their belts.
The tension in the room spiked.
“Mr. Romano, do not interfere,” the detective warned. “Or I’ll arrest you too.”
I grabbed the back of Adrian’s sleeve.
“Don’t,” I whispered.
He looked back at me, his jaw clenched so tight I thought his teeth might break.
“If you fight them, they’ll lock you up,” I pleaded. “Who will go to my mother? Who will ask her what she saw?”
Adrian’s eyes softened just a fraction.
He understood.
If we were both in a cell, Camille would have free rein to finish whatever she had started.
I stepped out from behind his back and walked down the stairs.
Every step felt like walking to my own execution.
The officer grabbed my arms and locked the cold metal handcuffs around my wrists.
It hurt, but I didn’t flinch.
As they led me past Camille, she leaned in slightly.
Her perfume smelled like roses and gunpowder.
“I told you I’d destroy you,” she whispered so only I could hear.
I didn’t look at her.
I looked at Adrian.
He was standing at the top of the stairs, watching me with a promise in his eyes.
A promise of absolute ruin for the woman who had put me in chains.
The ride to the precinct was a blur of neon streetlights and panic.
They put me in a holding room.
Grey walls. A metal table.
For two hours, no one came in.
I stared at my shaking hands, terrified for my mother.
Suddenly, the heavy metal door swung open.
It wasn’t a police officer.
It was an older man in a sharp, immaculately tailored suit.
He had silver hair and a leather briefcase.
“Ms. Reed. I am Arthur Vance. Legal counsel for the Romano family.”
He sat down across from me, snapping his briefcase open.
“Mr. Romano sent you?” I asked, relief flooding my chest.
“Yes. Adrian is currently tearing the district attorney’s office apart to get these charges dropped.”
Vance pulled out a stack of documents.
“However, we have a time-sensitive issue. Adrian instructed me to bring you this.”
He slid a small, heavy object across the table.
I frowned.
It was an old, wooden rosary.
The beads were worn smooth from years of prayer.
“Evan retrieved this from your mother’s hands at the nursing home,” Vance explained. “She refused to let the doctors sedate her until she gave this to Evan. She said, ‘Give it to Hannah. The cross opens.’”
I picked up the rosary.
My hands were trembling again.
I knew this rosary. It had hung on my mother’s bedroom mirror for as long as I could remember.
But I never knew the cross opened.
I pressed my fingernail into a tiny groove on the side of the wooden crucifix.
There was a soft click.
The bottom half of the cross slid away.
Inside was a tiny, tightly rolled piece of paper.
I pulled it out and unrolled it flat against the metal table.
It wasn’t a note.
It was a vintage train ticket.
Faded yellow. Punched on the side.
Blackwood Lake Station to Montreal.
Date: November 14, 2015.
The exact night Marcus Romano disappeared.
“Look at the passenger name,” Vance said quietly.
I looked closer at the faded ink.
It didn’t say Marcus Romano.
It said: Elena Reed & Child.
My breath left my lungs.
Elena Reed.
My mother.
“My mother wasn’t in New York eleven years ago,” I whispered. “She was at the lake house.”
“Yes,” Vance said. “And she wasn’t a seamstress, Hannah. She was the Romano family’s private nurse.”
The room spun.
“Nurse for who?”
“For Marcus.”
Before I could process the words, the holding room door flew open again.
The lead detective stood there, looking pale.
Behind him stood Adrian.
Adrian didn’t even look at the detective. He walked straight to me and pulled me out of the metal chair.
“You’re released,” Adrian said.
“How?” I gasped.
“I just handed the police the original security footage of Camille putting the necklace in your coat,” Adrian said grimly.
“But the camera was off!”
“The camera in the corridor was off,” Adrian corrected. “The camera hidden inside the locker room vent was recording perfectly.”
He looked down at the table. At the train ticket.
He recognized it immediately.
“Where did you get that?” Adrian asked.
“My mother,” I said, my voice trembling. “She was there, Adrian. She was at the lake house when Marcus disappeared.”
Adrian stared at the ticket, then looked up at me.
“We’re leaving.”
May you like
“To the nursing home?”
“No.” Adrian’s eyes were pitch black. “We’re going to Blackwood Lake.”
