Chapter 3
The police separated us immediately.
Two officers took Vanessa downstairs.
Another stayed with me.
Paramedics rushed into the room.
Lily panicked when they approached.
“No needles!”
“No one is giving you a needle,” the female paramedic said softly.
Lily clung to Emma.
Emma clung back.
I crouched beside them.
“You’re both safe.”
Lily looked at me.
“Promise?”
That word destroyed me.
Because I had learned one thing in the last ten minutes.
Promises meant nothing if you did not know what was happening inside your own house.
“I’m going to make sure,” I said.
It was the only honest answer I had.
The paramedics examined her slowly.
Dehydrated.
Malnourished.
Bruises in different stages of healing.
No obvious life-threatening injuries.
The words came at me like bullets.
I looked toward the hallway.
Vanessa had lived thirty feet away from me.
Slept beside me.
Kissed me goodbye.
Held my hand at charity events.
And all that time, she had been doing this.
An officer named Detective Sarah Bennett arrived twenty minutes later.
She had gray eyes and a calm voice that did not match the chaos around us.
“Mr. Cole, I need you to come downstairs.”
“I’m not leaving the girls.”
“They’ll stay with the paramedics.”
“No.”
She studied me.
Then looked at Emma.
“Fine. We’ll talk here.”
Vanessa was already in handcuffs.
I could hear her yelling downstairs.
She was asking for an attorney.
I hoped she got the best one in Texas.
I wanted there to be no excuse when she went to prison.
Detective Bennett opened a small notebook.
“How long have you known Lily?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“Your wife says Lily is your biological daughter.”
“I don’t know if that’s true.”
“But the mother’s name means something to you?”
“Yes.”
“Who is Rachel?”
“My former girlfriend.”
“When did you last see her?”
“Almost seven years ago.”
“How did the relationship end?”
Badly.
That answer came instantly.
But as I looked at Lily, I forced myself deeper into the memory.
Rachel and I had been together for almost three years.
Before the money.
Before the company exploded.
Before private jets and magazine covers.
She was with me when I worked eighteen-hour days out of a rented office.
Then everything changed.
One night Rachel accused me of cheating.
I denied it.
Because I had not cheated.
She showed me pictures.
Pictures of me entering a hotel with another woman.
They looked real.
I insisted they were fake.
Rachel did not believe me.
She left.
Two weeks later, I received a letter from her.
She said she never wanted to see me again.
A month later, her number changed.
Then she vanished.
I told Detective Bennett everything.
She listened without interrupting.
“When did you meet Vanessa?”
“About six months later.”
“And those photographs?”
“I never discovered who sent them.”
“Did Rachel ever contact you afterward?”
“No.”
I paused.
“At least I didn’t think she did.”
Bennett noticed.
“What changed?”
I remembered something.
An envelope.
My old assistant had once told me that a woman dropped something at the office.
No return address.
Vanessa had been visiting me that day.
I never saw it.
At the time, I assumed it was junk mail.
“What?”
Detective Bennett pressed.
“Rachel may have tried.”
Emma was sitting on the mattress beside Lily.
She had found a stuffed bear somewhere among the paramedic supplies and handed it to her.
Lily held it against her chest.
“Detective.”
“Yes?”
“I want every device in this house searched.”
“We’ll need proper authorization.”
“You have my consent for anything I own.”
She nodded.
“We’re already securing the property.”
“And Vanessa’s phone?”
“It’s evidence.”
“Good.”
The paramedic approached.
“We need to transport Lily.”
“I’m coming.”
“Mr. Cole,” Bennett said, “you may need to stay.”
“She’s terrified.”
“She needs treatment.”
“And I said I’m coming.”
The detective studied Lily.
Then Emma.
“All right.”
At the bottom of the staircase, Vanessa was being led toward the front door.
She saw Lily in my arms.
Her face twisted.
“You think you rescued her?”
I stopped.
Bennett stepped between us.
“Keep moving.”
Vanessa ignored her.
“Daniel, she’s not the victim you think she is.”
“She’s six years old.”
“You don’t know what Rachel did.”
My voice dropped.
“Where is Rachel?”
Vanessa smiled.
That same terrible smile.
“Exactly.”
Police pushed her outside.
Reporters had not arrived yet.
Thank God.
The ambulance ride was quiet.
Emma sat beside me because she refused to leave Lily.
At the hospital, doctors separated them for tests.
Emma cried.
Lily screamed.
Eventually, the pediatric specialist agreed to let Emma stay nearby as long as she did not interfere.
I called my attorney.
Then my head of security.
Then the chairman of my company.
I told him I was taking an indefinite leave.
He started asking questions.
I hung up.
My daughter had eaten dog food on my kitchen floor.
Another child had been locked upstairs for eight months.
Quarterly earnings could burn.
An hour later, Detective Bennett found me outside Lily’s room.
“We confirmed something.”
I stood.
“What?”
“Lily’s full name is Lily Rachel Mercer.”
My throat tightened.
“Rachel gave her my last name?”
“No.”
“What do you mean?”
“She was legally registered as Lily Mercer.”
“Then how did Vanessa find her?”
“We’re working on that.”
“Is Rachel alive?”
Bennett hesitated.
That hesitation terrified me.
“We found a missing-person report.”
My chest went cold.
“From when?”
“Eight months ago.”
Exactly when Lily had been placed in that room.
I leaned against the wall.
“Who reported her missing?”
“A coworker.”
“Where?”
“Austin.”
Rachel had been living three hours away.
For years.
Three hours.
I could have driven to her.
I could have known Lily.
Birthdays.
Christmas mornings.
First words.
First steps.
All gone.
I looked through the glass.
Lily was sleeping.
Emma was curled in a chair beside the bed.
“What does the report say?”
“Rachel left work on a Thursday evening. Never showed up the next morning. Her car was found outside her apartment.”
“What about Lily?”
“The original report says Rachel’s daughter was also missing.”
I turned sharply.
“So Vanessa took both of them?”
“We don’t know that.”
“She had Lily.”
“We know that.”
“Where is Rachel?”
“We don’t know.”
I covered my face.
Then something occurred to me.
“Eight months.”
“Yes.”
“Vanessa said Lily wasn’t supposed to be there this long.”
Bennett nodded.
“I heard.”
“What if Rachel is alive?”
“We’re investigating every possibility.”
“No.”
I lowered my hands.
“What if Lily knows?”
The detective looked toward the room.
“She’s traumatized. We can’t interrogate her.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
Bennett’s phone rang.
She stepped away.
I went into Lily’s room.
Emma was awake.
She whispered, “Daddy.”
I kissed her forehead.
“How are you?”
“Okay.”
She was not okay.
Neither of them was.
Lily opened her eyes.
When she saw me, she looked afraid.
Then she remembered.
“You’re Emma’s daddy.”
“Yes.”
She looked at my face for a long time.
“My mommy said I had a daddy.”
I swallowed.
“Did she tell you his name?”
“Daniel.”
I could not speak.
Lily reached under her blanket.
She pulled out a folded piece of paper.
It was old.
Creased dozens of times.
She handed it to me.
A photograph.
Rachel.
Holding a baby.
Lily.
Beside them was a picture of me cut from a business magazine.
Rachel had glued the pictures together.
On the back, she had written:
Someday, when you are older, I will explain everything.
He does not know about you.
I sat down.
My hands shook.
Lily watched me.
“Mommy said she tried to tell you.”
Tears filled my eyes.
“She did?”
Lily nodded.
“But the pretty lady told Mommy you hated us.”
“Pretty lady?”
“The one who came to our apartment.”
My heart stopped.
“Vanessa?”
Lily nodded.
“Mommy cried after she left.”
I could barely breathe.
“When was that?”
“A long time ago.”
“Before you came to my house?”
“Yes.”
I looked toward the door.
Detective Bennett was still on her phone.
“Lily.”
She looked at me.
“Did Vanessa take you from your mommy?”
Her fingers tightened around the blanket.
She nodded.
“Where was your mommy?”
Lily’s eyes filled with tears.
“In the car.”
“What car?”
“The black one.”
“What happened?”
“She told me to close my eyes.”
“Vanessa?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to your mother?”
Lily started shaking.
I immediately stopped.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me.”
But she grabbed my sleeve.
“She was sleeping.”
I froze.
“What?”
“Mommy was sleeping in the back.”
My chest tightened.
“Was she breathing?”
Lily looked confused.
“I don’t know.”
Then she whispered something that turned my blood to ice.
“The man said they had to move her before you came home.”
“What man?”
Lily stared at the door.
“The man who lives downstairs.”
I stood slowly.
My mansion did not have a downstairs bedroom.
May you like
It had a basement.
And according to Vanessa, that basement had been empty for almost a year.
