Chapter 3 - The Clue in the Nursery
Rachel involuntarily took a step back as Adrian approached her. The sheer presence of the man—the aura of absolute control mixed with lethal intent—was overwhelming.
"Mr. Vale," Rachel whispered, holding Emma closer. "Please. We won't say anything to anyone. Just let us leave."
Adrian stopped three feet away. He looked at Emma, who was staring up at him with large, innocent blue eyes, completely unfazed by the violence that had just unfolded.
"Your daughter found a tape that my best men missed for eleven months," Adrian said, his voice lowering into a gravelly baritone. "And my wife left a message on that tape. She said, 'The key is under the blue...' before she was cut off."
He looked into Rachel’s eyes. "My wife didn't like blue. She hated the color. The only room in this entire fifty-room mansion that has anything blue in it is the nursery."
"Lily's old room?" Rachel asked, her pulse racing.
"Lily's old room," Adrian confirmed. He looked down at Emma. "Little one. Do you like playing hide and seek?"
Emma nodded rapidly, her plastic needle still clasped in her tiny hand. "I find things. Mommy says I have eagle eyes."
A ghost of a smile brushed past Adrian’s hard lips—the first trace of humanity he had shown since the tape began playing. "Then come with me. Help me find what Claire left for us."
Five minutes later, Adrian, Rachel, and Emma stood inside the third-floor nursery. The room had been preserved exactly as it was when Lily was a toddler—soft pastel walls, hand-painted wooden cribs, and a massive, custom-built wooden dollhouse resting against the far wall.
The entire floor was covered in a thick, custom-woven navy-blue carpet depicting stars and constellations.
"Under the blue," Rachel murmured, looking down at the massive carpet. "Does she mean under the rug?"
"We pulled this carpet up three days after the accident when we swept the house for listening devices," Adrian said, pacing around the room. "There was nothing beneath the floorboards. Claire knew my security team would tear the floors apart if anything happened to her. She wouldn't hide something where a standard sweep would find it."
Rachel looked around the room, her eyes scanning the stuffed animals, the ceiling stencils, the pastel paintings.
Meanwhile, Emma trotted across the room, her small shoes squeaking on the wood, and stopped directly in front of the giant wooden dollhouse.
The dollhouse was an exact replica of the Lake Forest mansion itself—complete with miniature stone pillars, tiny glass windows, and a little wooden staircase.
Emma reached out, pointing her tiny finger at the roof of the miniature mansion.
"The blue house has a blue attic," Emma announced cheerfully.
Adrian immediately crossed the room, dropping down beside the toddler. He looked closely at the miniature replica of his own home.
The roof of the dollhouse was painted in standard dark gray slate shingles. But inside the tiny attic window, visible only if you crouched down to eye-level with a three-year-old, was a tiny, doll-sized chest painted brilliant sapphire blue.
Adrian reached his long fingers into the tiny attic space. The blue chest was glued to the wooden floor of the miniature room, but as he pressed down on the little chimney atop the dollhouse, a tiny mechanical click sounded.
The roof of the dollhouse swung open on hidden brass hinges.
Inside the hollowed-out wooden frame of the dollhouse structure lay a small, high-density black flash drive and a key tagged with a brass number: Vault 402 - Continental Bank of Chicago.
Adrian picked up the flash drive. His hands were completely steady now.
"She built this dollhouse herself," Adrian murmured, his voice thick with a sudden rush of memory. "She spent three months in the workshop downstairs during her pregnancy. She said it was a gift for Lily's future."
He looked up at Rachel, his eyes burning with a dark, terrifying intensity.
"Claire didn't just record a message, Rachel. She documented every single transaction, every bribe, every wire transfer, and every meeting between Vanessa Hale and the Moretti family."
Before Rachel could respond, the loud, frantic sound of heavy footsteps echoed down the marble hallway outside the nursery.
Marcus burst into the doorway, his weapon drawn, his face dark with urgency.
"Boss," Marcus breathed, his chest heaving. "We’ve got a problem. The perimeter sensors on the south gate just went down. Three dark SUVs just cleared the outer fence."
Adrian closed his hand over the flash drive and the vault key.
May you like
"The Morettis," Adrian said coldly.
"They aren't here to negotiate, Boss," Marcus said, checking the magazine of his pistol. "They brought heavy iron. They know Vanessa failed."
