Chapter 8 - What Daniel Buried
Police sealed the hospital, but Teresa and Marcus escaped through an ambulance bay using forged transfer papers.
Connor returned to the safe residence with a bruised shoulder and Marcus’s words repeating in his head.
Ask Daniel what he buried under the nursery.
Daniel denied knowing anything.
Connor did not believe him.
They went back to the house before sunrise with Ortiz and a forensic team. The nursery had already been stripped for evidence, but Daniel stood in the center, staring at the floor as though seeing two decades layered over one another.
“When I designed the house,” he said, “Vane asked for a foundation vault.”
“You said a corridor and storage.”
“I did not tell you everything.”
Connor’s anger rose. “You never do.”
Daniel knelt near the crib wall. Beneath the carpet, he found a brass pin set into the concrete. He pressed it and turned. A rectangular section of floor released with a sigh.
Inside was a sealed waterproof case.
Daniel had placed it there during construction, before Connor and Amy bought the home, when the property still belonged to a development company. He had hidden it because Crown House members were searching his office.
The case contained original ledgers from the 1990s, photographs, audio cassettes, and a black iron key marked with the crown symbol.
It also contained a letter addressed to Connor.
Daniel had written it twenty-eight years earlier.
Connor read only the first line before throwing it down.
If you are reading this, then Teresa has chosen the inheritance over you.
Amy picked up the letter after he walked away.
Daniel described Adrian Vane as charismatic, reckless, and terrified of his father. Adrian had tried to expose Crown House. He gathered names and accounts, then disappeared. Teresa was the last person known to see him alive.
The letter suggested Adrian might have been murdered.
By Teresa.
Daniel had no proof.
The ledgers might provide it.
Ortiz’s team catalogued every page. The records linked judges, doctors, social workers, attorneys, and property officers to fraudulent transfers spanning three states. Some names were retired. Others still held office.
One name stunned Amy.
Maren Pike.
The hospital social worker who had closed the safety hold.
Her signature appeared beside six family removals.
Connor called the hospital.
Maren had resigned that morning.
At the safe residence, Amy checked Frederick’s medication bag and found a tracking tag sewn into the lining. Someone had placed it there during the hospital stay.
She dropped it into a metal bowl.
“They know where we are.”
The alarm system sounded before she finished.
A guard shouted from downstairs.
A vehicle had breached the gate.
Connor grabbed Frederick while Amy followed Ortiz into an interior room.
But the intruder did not enter.
A black van stopped in the driveway. Its rear doors opened. Daniel’s missing car rolled out unmanned and struck a tree.
Inside the trunk was no body.
Only a projector.
When police activated it, a video filled the garage wall.
Teresa sat in a high-backed chair.
Beside her stood an elderly man with silver hair and a cane.
Elias Vane.
May you like
He smiled into the camera.
“Bring me my great-grandson,” he said, “or I will publish the proof that Connor Hale murdered Adrian Vane.”
