Chapter 8
Police traced the call to a warehouse district near the river.
By the time officers arrived, Rebecca was gone.
So was Victor.
They found blood.
Not much.
Enough to terrify everyone.
They also found Rebecca’s broken phone.
The last call was mine.
Detective Park ordered me home.
I refused.
She threatened to have an officer escort me.
I told her to try.
Ethan told both of us to stop acting like children.
Eventually, Marcus convinced me of the obvious.
Running toward a warehouse would not help Rebecca.
Protecting Lily might.
I returned to Claire’s condo.
Lily was sitting on the floor with Ava.
I stopped in the doorway.
“What is she doing here?”
Claire stood.
“Ava’s father brought her.”
“Why?”
“He thinks Rebecca may come here.”
I stared at Ava.
She was ten.
Small.
Dark hair like her mother.
Her eyes were swollen from crying.
Suddenly all the suspicion I had felt toward her looked ridiculous.
She was a child.
A child whose mother was missing.
Whose uncle was connected to a criminal plan.
Whose grandfather might be a killer.
Lily reached for Ava’s hand.
“It’s okay.”
Ava whispered, “No, it isn’t.”
I walked into the room.
“Ava.”
She looked up.
Fear flashed across her face.
She knew who I was.
Not Lily’s dad.
Daniel Bennett.
The man adults whispered about.
“I’m not angry with you.”
Her lips trembled.
“Yes, you are.”
“Not with you.”
“I told Lily to go to the bakery.”
Lily squeezed her hand.
“I already told him.”
Ava started crying.
“I thought it was supposed to help.”
My stomach tightened.
“Help what?”
She looked toward Claire.
Then at me.
“Mom said Lily’s dad needed to remember something.”
“What?”
“She wouldn’t tell me.”
I crouched.
“Did your mom ask you to send Lily to the bakery?”
Ava shook her head.
“No.”
“Then who did?”
“My grandpa.”
The room went silent.
“Victor?”
She nodded.
I fought to keep my voice calm.
“How long have you known Victor?”
“Mom told me he was a family friend.”
“Did you know he was her father?”
“No.”
“When did he tell you to talk to Lily?”
“He didn’t tell me.”
I frowned.
“He said things.”
“What things?”
“That Lily wanted to be independent.”
“How did he know that?”
“I told him.”
I closed my eyes briefly.
A child’s innocent conversations.
Weaponized by adults.
“He said sometimes parents don’t understand their kids until the kids prove something.”
Ava wiped her face.
“He said if Lily went somewhere alone, you’d finally realize she didn’t need people following her all the time.”
I looked at Lily.
She stared at the floor.
Ava continued.
“He said the bakery was safe.”
“Did he say he would be there?”
“No.”
“Did he say your uncle would?”
“No.”
“Did he ask when Lily’s dad had meetings?”
Ava nodded slowly.
“Yes.”
There it was.
Victor used Ava.
Rebecca used Russo.
Russo used Trevor.
George had been manipulated.
Everybody was pulling someone else’s string.
And Lily stood in the middle.
Not because she was blind.
Because adults assumed children were easy to use.
“Did Victor say anything else?”
Ava thought.
Then her face changed.
“He gave me something.”
“What?”
“A birthday card for Lily.”
Lily frowned.
“My birthday isn’t until November.”
“I know. That’s why I didn’t give it to you.”
My pulse jumped.
“Where is it?”
“In my backpack.”
Claire grabbed the bag.
Ava showed her a side pocket.
Inside was a sealed envelope.
LILY.
We called Park before opening it.
Police photographed the envelope.
Inside was a braille card.
Victor had gone to the trouble of embossing a message Lily could read herself.
She touched the dots.
I wanted to stop her.
Then remembered my promise.
Dad first.
Not dictator.
She read slowly.
“Sometimes... the people... who say they protect us... are the people... hiding the truth.”
She stopped.
“That’s it.”
But there was handwriting on the back.
For me.
ASK YOUR FATHER ABOUT SARAH.
Victor wanted Lily to ask me.
He wanted my daughter to become the messenger carrying his old secrets.
My anger became something colder.
Victor wasn’t trying simply to hurt me.
He wanted to poison the way Lily saw me.
Make her wonder what I had done.
Make me doubt my father.
Make Rebecca doubt everyone.
He wanted every family around him to fracture the way his had.
My phone rang.
Detective Park.
“We found Victor’s car.”
“Where?”
“Near an abandoned storage facility in Pilsen.”
“Rebecca?”
“No.”
“What did you find?”
“Another car.”
“Whose?”
“Anthony Russo’s.”
I looked at Ethan.
He had been right.
Russo wasn’t a pawn.
He was part of the old story.
Police brought Russo in again.
This time they had enough evidence to push harder.
The cassette.
His employment history.
His lies about knowing Victor.
The messages with Trevor.
Within two hours, Russo cracked.
Not completely.
Enough.
He admitted knowing Victor twenty years ago.
He admitted helping Victor move money.
He admitted following Sarah once.
But he denied tampering with her car.
“Who did?” detectives asked.
Russo said he didn’t know.
Then came the bakery.
Victor approached him six months earlier.
He wanted information about me.
My routines.
My family.
He wanted to know whether I ever came into the bakery with Lily.
Russo recognized Lily from social media coverage of charity events.
Then Rebecca appeared separately.
She wanted information too.
Russo realized Victor and Rebecca were working against each other.
So he played both sides.
He took Victor’s money.
He took Rebecca’s money.
And on the day Lily came alone, he made his own decision.
He humiliated her.
Why?
Because he hated the Bennett name.
He blamed my testimony for Victor’s conviction.
Victor’s downfall had destroyed Russo’s side businesses too.
He saw Lily and decided to hurt me through her.
No grand plan.
No instruction.
Just hatred.
Trevor had been meant to scare someone later.
Russo moved the plan forward on his own.
That was what made monsters difficult to understand.
They didn’t always operate according to one plan.
Sometimes they improvised cruelty.
Late that afternoon, police received a call from Rebecca.
This time from a gas station twenty miles outside Chicago.
She was alive.
Bruised.
Terrified.
But alive.
Victor had confronted her at the warehouse.
They argued.
He took her phone.
When Russo unexpectedly arrived, Rebecca escaped through a side door.
“Why did Russo go there?” I asked Park.
“Victor called him.”
“For what?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Rebecca agreed to come in.
When I finally saw her, I understood why Lily had thought her voice sounded familiar.
Rebecca resembled Ava around the mouth.
Same way of tightening her lips when frightened.
She sat across from me in Park’s interview room.
We were allowed ten minutes.
Ethan came with me.
Rebecca looked at me.
“I’m sorry.”
I didn’t answer.
“For Lily.”
My jaw tightened.
“You should be.”
“I thought if you got scared, you’d start digging.”
“You could have called me.”
“You wouldn’t have believed me.”
“You didn’t try.”
She looked down.
“No.”
“Instead you investigated my child.”
“I never wanted her hurt.”
“You don’t get credit for the harm you didn’t intend.”
She absorbed that.
Then nodded.
“You’re right.”
I hadn’t expected agreement.
It took some anger out of me.
Not forgiveness.
Just heat.
“Why didn’t you tell me about Sarah?”
“Because I spent my whole life thinking your family protected Victor.”
“My father tried to expose him.”
“I know that now.”
“What changed last month?”
“I found one of Mom’s old letters.”
She slid a photocopy across the table.
It was written to my father.
Robert,
IF YOU EVER HAVE TO CHOOSE BETWEEN PROTECTING DANIEL AND TELLING THE TRUTH, PLEASE CHOOSE THE TRUTH.
My throat tightened.
Rebecca continued.
“That was when I realized your father might have been helping her.”
“So you came to Chicago.”
“Yes.”
“And Victor followed.”
“I contacted him first.”
Ethan frowned.
“Why?”
“I wanted him scared.”
I almost laughed at the symmetry.
Everyone wanted someone scared.
Look where it got us.
Rebecca’s eyes filled.
“I told Victor I had proof.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Then why did he come?”
“Because guilty people never know how much evidence exists.”
Fair point.
“What does he want now?”
“The cassette.”
“He knows we found it?”
“I think so.”
“What happens if he gets it?”
Rebecca looked at me.
“The tape isn’t the most important evidence.”
I stared at her.
“What is?”
“My mother made another recording.”
Park, listening from outside, entered immediately.
“What recording?”
Rebecca looked at her.
“The night before she died.”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
I leaned forward.
“Then how do you know?”
“Because she wrote about it in a letter.”
“To whom?”
Rebecca’s eyes shifted to me.
“To Daniel’s father.”
“Was that letter in the box?”
“No.”
“Then where?”
“I found it years ago among my grandmother’s things.”
“What did it say?”
Rebecca took a breath.
“My mother said Victor confessed.”
The room froze.
“To what?”
“Fraud.”
“Anything else?”
“She wrote that he admitted having Anthony follow her and said if she ever tried to take Rebecca away, he would make sure she never got there.”
Park asked, “Did she record that conversation?”
“Yes.”
“Where did she put it?”
“Her letter said, ‘Robert knows where the second copy is.’”
My father.
Again.
I thought of his journals.
Blue box eleven led to the first evidence.
Maybe another clue remained.
We returned to the journals.
That night, Lily sat beside me while I read.
She traced braille homework.
I scanned Dad’s handwriting.
Then Lily said, “Read that one again.”
“What?”
“The line you just said.”
I had been reading aloud without realizing.
“Which line?”
“About the music.”
I looked back.
July 12:
MUSIC HOLDS WHAT PAPER CANNOT. E. PROMISED TO KEEP IT UNTIL REBECCA IS OLD ENOUGH.
“E,” Ethan said.
“Who is E?”
My mind jumped instantly to Emily.
But I hadn’t met Emily yet.
Not for another four years.
Claire said, “Maybe a last name.”
Mom stood.
Her face had gone pale.
“What?”
She looked at me.
“Eleanor.”
“Who is Eleanor?”
“Your father’s sister.”
Aunt Eleanor.
She had been a concert pianist.
She moved to Wisconsin when I was a teenager.
I hadn’t seen her in years.
Mom whispered, “Robert trusted her more than anyone.”
“Is she alive?”
“Yes.”
“Ninety-two.”
“Where?”
“A nursing home outside Madison.”
My phone rang before I could answer.
Marcus.
“Daniel.”
“What?”
“We have movement on Victor.”
My pulse jumped.
“Where?”
“Traffic camera caught him heading north.”
“North where?”
Marcus hesitated.
“Toward Wisconsin.”
I stared at my mother.
Then at Dad’s journal.
Victor knew.
May you like
Somehow, he knew about Eleanor.
And he was already ahead of us.
