Chapter 7 - The Interrogation of a Three-Year-Old
Elena found her daughter sitting on the low cushioned bench in the boot room, carefully attempting to tie the laces of her sneakers with clumsy, determined fingers.
The relief that washed over Elena was so violent that her knees nearly gave out on the slate tiles. She crossed the room in three breathless strides, dropping to her knees, pulling Lily against her chest so hard that the little girl let out an indignant squeak.
"Lily Marie Bennett," Elena gasped into the child’s hair, her hands frantically checking Lily’s arms, her forehead, her ribs, searching for bruises or scrapes. "Where were you? I told you never to leave the playroom without Mrs. Gable!"
"I was helping Mimi," Lily said, her hazel eyes looking up with complete, untroubled innocence. She held up her empty hands, her brow furrowing slightly as she remembered. "Oh. Mimi is staying downstairs."
Elena froze, her hands still resting on Lily’s shoulders. The cold dread that had prickled her neck in the kitchen returned with the force of an icy wave. "What do you mean, Mimi is staying downstairs? Where downstairs, Lily?"
"In the little door," Lily explained, pointing her small finger toward the direction of the service corridor. "Behind the big bottles. There’s a nightlight down there, Mommy. And a big birdcage."
Elena felt the room tilt beneath her knees.
The wine cellar was an inventory she knew well; she had managed the estate’s domestic logs for four years. There were racks, casks, and a gravel drain. There was no little door. There was no birdcage.
"Lily," Elena whispered, her voice trembling despite her desperate attempt to keep it steady. "Who was in the birdcage?"
Lily tilted her head, her red ribbon slipping slightly over one ear. "A tired man. He was wearing his church suit, but it had mud on it. He was sitting on the wooden bed because he was in time-out."
Elena’s throat went bone-dry. Her mind raced through the last twelve days: Marco’s sudden "business trip," Julian’s closed-door meetings, the private security guards who wouldn't look her in the eye, the heavy brass key Julian had been holding in the pantry ten minutes ago.
A church suit.
A wooden bed.
Twelve days.
"What... what did the man look like, Lily?" Elena asked, her fingernails digging into the palms of her own hands until they nearly drew blood.
Lily scrunched her nose, thinking hard. "He had messy dark hair like the waves in the bathtub. And a little beard. Like Daddy’s beard, but scratchier. And he had a big shiny clock on his arm."
Elena stopped breathing entirely.
The shiny clock.
Marco wore a vintage Patek Philippe with a platinum mesh bracelet—a gift from his father on the day he took over the family’s maritime logistics terminals. He never took it off. Even when he slept, the heavy platinum band remained welded to his left wrist.
"Did he speak to you, Lily?" Elena choked out, the tears finally burning behind her eyelids, hot and furious.
"He told me to run," Lily said, her small voice dropping into that serious, mimicking cadence she used when repeating adult warnings. "He said the bad men were coming down the stairs with the keys. And then I gave him Mimi so he wouldn't be scared of the dark."
Elena pulled her daughter into her arms once more, burying her face into the soft red wool of Lily’s sweater, her entire body shaking with a silent, catastrophic revelation.
May you like
Marco was not in Montreal.
Her husband—the father of her child, the man who had built this gilded fortress to keep them safe—had not abandoned them. He was locked in an iron cage beneath their feet, thirty feet below the marble floorboards, waiting for his brother to finish the execution.
