Chapter 6 - A PROMISE NO ONE COULD KEEP
Emma was found three minutes later in the mansion’s old music room, sitting beneath the grand piano with her arms around a stuffed rabbit. She had not been taken. Someone had placed the frog in the nursery and left the note, then used the alarm to pull my guards away from the corridor.
It was a warning, not a kidnapping.
That did not make it harmless.
I knelt in front of Emma. “Did anyone talk to you?”
She shook her head.
“Did you leave the nursery?”
“No. I heard a noise, so I hid.”
“Good girl.”
She looked at my face. “Are you mad at Mommy?”
“No.”
“Are you mad at me?”
The question landed in the part of me I had spent years pretending didn’t exist.
“No, Emma. I’m not mad at you.”
She reached up and touched the faint crease between my eyebrows. “You’re doing your grumpy face.”
I almost laughed. Instead, I pulled her into a careful hug and promised I would not let anyone hurt her. I had made promises like that before, and men had died anyway. This time, I understood that the promise was not a claim of control. It was a commitment to do everything I could without turning the child into a prisoner.
I moved Emma and Isabella to a secure guesthouse owned by a retired judge who owed my family a favor. I did not tell them it was temporary. I told them the truth: someone wanted Emma, and I needed to find out why before she could safely return.
Isabella accepted the move, but she set one condition. She wanted to accompany every guard who checked on Emma, and no one was allowed to question the child without her present.
I agreed.
Then I called Richard.
My uncle answered on the second ring. “Vincent. I heard there was trouble at the house.”
“Funny. I haven’t told you what happened.”
A pause. Barely a second, but enough.
“You’re my nephew,” he said. “I keep people informed when they make threats against you.”
“Who told you there was a threat?”
“Marco.”
Marco had not spoken to him.
I watched the skyline through my office window. “I found something Anthony left behind.”
The silence stretched longer this time.
“What did you find?”
“Enough to know you lied about his death.”
Richard exhaled slowly. “Grief makes men see patterns where there are none.”
“Then you won’t mind meeting me.”
“Of course not. Family should talk.”
We arranged to meet at an old Italian restaurant on Taylor Street, a place where my father used to take us when we were boys. I brought Marco and two trusted men, but I left the evidence with a lawyer who had no ties to my organization. If I disappeared, the documents would go to the authorities.
Richard arrived alone, wearing a charcoal suit and the same gold signet ring he’d worn at Anthony’s funeral.
He looked at the recorder on the table and went pale.
“You shouldn’t have opened that box,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because Anthony was trying to destroy this family.”
“He was trying to expose you.”
Richard shook his head. “You think this is about money? Your father made an agreement with people who don’t accept betrayal. Anthony found the ledger and wanted to take it to the FBI. I tried to stop him. I never ordered the bomb.”
“Who did?”
“Your father’s partners. The people who financed the empire before you were old enough to hold a gun.”
“Names.”
Richard looked toward the window. “You don’t understand what you’re asking.”
“I understand that you let me bury an empty casket.”
His face tightened. “I did what I had to do.”
The words were a confession, even if they were not the one I needed.
“Who is Emma’s father?”
Richard’s expression changed. The old man I knew—the one who had taught me to tie a tie before my first meeting—vanished. In his place was someone calculating whether the truth could still be used as a weapon.
“Anthony wasn’t the only man who survived that night,” he said. “The woman in the car took someone with her. Someone you have been searching for without knowing it.”
“Who?”
Richard leaned closer.
“Your father.”
Before I could respond, the restaurant windows shattered.
Marco tackled me to the floor. Gunfire tore through the room. When the shooting stopped, Richard was gone, and a bloodstained envelope lay beneath the table.
Inside was a photograph of my father, taken three days earlier.
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On the back, someone had written:
**HE WANTS HIS GRANDDAUGHTER BACK.**
