Chapter 5: The Name of the Place They Kept Her
Isabella looked at the fire for a long time before she spoke.
"I didn't know, at first, that she was — that she hadn't just left.
Charles told me she'd gone.
That she'd chosen to go.
That the marriage had been difficult for years and she'd simply reached her limit." She paused.
"I believed him because I wanted to believe him."
"When did you stop believing him?" Vincent asked.
"Eight months ago." She reached up and unclasped the pendant.
She held it in her palm for a moment — two silver leaves, a blue stone — and then set it on the arm of the chair.
She didn't look at it again.
"I found a payment record in Charles's secondary accounts.
I have access because we — because of the business arrangement.
The payment was to a property management company I didn't recognize.
A recurring transfer.
Every month for two years.
I asked Charles about it."
"What did he say?"
"He said it was a consulting retainer.
I knew it wasn't.
The amount was too specific.
Too regular.
Too — careful." She folded her hands in her lap.
"I hired someone to trace it.
It took three months.
The property management company is a shell.
The underlying asset is a residential property.
A private care facility, technically, though it isn't licensed as one.
It's in Vermont.
A town called Calder Falls.
About four hours north."
The room did not move.
"She's there?" Vincent's voice had changed.
Not louder.
Something else.
Stripped of everything except the question.
"I believe so.
I was never told directly.
I was never supposed to know." Isabella looked at him.
"I didn't go to you because I didn't know what you would do to me.
I didn't go to the authorities because I didn't know what Charles would do to me.
I told myself I was still gathering information.
I told myself I needed to be certain." She stopped.
"I know what that sounds like."
"It sounds like you chose yourself," Dominic said from the doorway.
She didn't argue.
Charles had been listening with his hands flat on his knees and his eyes on the floor.
Now he looked up.
"Whatever she's told you, I want it on record that I acted in the interest of the Moretti family trust.
Sofia was going to expose business arrangements that would have—"
"Stop." Vincent looked at him.
"Stop talking about the trust.
Stop talking about arrangements.
My wife has been held in a facility in Vermont for three years.
While I signed papers.
While I attended dinners.
While I stood in this house and believed she had left me." His voice was still quiet.
It was the quietest it had been all afternoon.
"You will not talk to me about the trust."
Charles's mouth closed.
"Dominic." Vincent straightened.
"Get the car.
And call Reeves back.
Tell him we have a location."
"Already moving." Dominic was gone from the doorway before the sentence finished.
Vincent looked at Isabella.
"The name of the facility.
The exact address."
"I'll write it down."
"You'll come with us."
She looked up sharply.
"Not as a prisoner," he said.
"As the person who knows what we're walking into.
You traced it.
You know the layout, the management, the access points.
You know more than you've admitted and you know it." He picked up the unsigned papers from the table and held them for a moment.
"And because if you stay here alone with Charles, one of you will do something I'll regret."
He dropped the papers into the fireplace.
They caught immediately.
Charles made a sound — half word, half breath — and then said nothing, watching three years of careful legal architecture turn to ash in under a minute.
Grace had been standing near the service entrance through all of this, her hand on Emily's shoulder.
Now Emily looked up at her.
"Are they going to find her?" Emily asked.
Grace watched the papers burn.
"Yes."
"How do you know?"
"Because Sofia planned for this day.
She planned for every part of it.
She just needed someone to find the phone." Grace looked down at her daughter.
"She needed you to find the phone."
Emily thought about this.
About the sewing box.
The loose button.
The vibration under the towel.
"She didn't know it would be me."
"No," Grace said.
"But I think she knew it would be someone who remembered her."
Emily looked at the pendant sitting abandoned on the arm of Isabella's chair.
Two silver leaves.
A blue stone.
She thought about a woman in an expensive blue dress sitting on a laundry room floor, helping a five-year-old build a cardboard castle.
She thought about white roses in winter, pretending they weren't cold.
"Mom," she said.
"Can I come?"
Grace looked at Vincent.
Vincent had heard.
He was pulling on his jacket, his phone already in his hand.
He looked at Emily for a moment.
"She'll want to see you," he said.
"She'll want to see both of you."
He walked toward the door.
Then he stopped and turned back to Charles, who had not moved from his chair.
"Agent Reeves will be here within the hour," Vincent said.
"I'd suggest you use the time to call that lawyer you wanted."
Charles said nothing.
"Charles." Vincent's voice dropped to something very low.
"If she is not there.
If anything has happened to her.
If she is not exactly as she should be — I want you to understand something."
He didn't finish the sentence.
He didn't need to.
Charles Bellamy, who had spent eighteen years as the most trusted man in the Moretti household, looked at the man he had betrayed and understood, completely and without any remaining doubt, what the unfinished sentence contained.
Vincent walked out.
May you like
The fire finished the papers.
And in the grand ballroom of the Moretti estate, surrounded by white roses that had no business being there, Charles Bellamy sat alone and waited for a knock at the door he knew was coming.
