Chapter 3 - Three Missing Days.
Damian locked the library doors and placed the brass key on the table between them.
Lucas stared at it as though it had crawled out of a grave.
"Dad destroyed that key."
"Apparently not," Damian said.
Victor stepped closer but did not touch it.
"If the box still exists, someone may have been trying to reach whatever is inside."
Harper gave a humorless laugh.
"Someone already did."
Damian looked at her.
"How do you know?"
"Because the safe in your father's study was empty when I opened it."
Lucas snapped his head toward her.
"You opened his safe?"
"The door was already open."
Harper described what she remembered before the blow to her head.
There had been a ledger on the desk, a black security card beside it, and a photograph of Damian's father standing with three younger men outside the original mansion.
One of those men had been Victor's father.
Another had been Damian's godfather, Arthur Bell.
The third had been a man Harper did not recognize.
"What happened after you woke up?" Damian asked.
Harper's voice became flatter, as if emotion would make the memory impossible to tell.
She had awakened in the maintenance chamber with her wrists zip-tied and a strip of tape over her mouth.
A bottle of water and two protein bars had been left beside her.
No one entered during the first day.
On the second night, she heard two voices beyond the service wall.
One belonged to a man.
The other was electronically distorted through a phone.
"What did they say?"
"They argued about whether I had seen the ledger."
Damian's hands tightened around the armrests.
"Anything else?"
Harper nodded.
"One of them said you would sign everything once you thought Ella was next."
Ella looked up at her mother.
Damian felt the blood leave his face.
"Sign what?"
"I don't know."
Lucas pushed away from the shelf.
"This is insane."
"Is it?" Damian asked.
Lucas froze.
The brothers had spent two years fighting over the future of Cole Meridian, the family company Damian had rebuilt after their father's death.
Lucas wanted to sell the logistics division.
Damian refused.
That argument was known across the board.
Lucas saw the accusation forming and stepped forward.
"I have done a lot of stupid things, but I did not lock a woman under your floor."
Harper looked at Damian.
"I don't think he did."
Lucas blinked.
Victor finally spoke.
"Then why did you look at him before?"
"Because the voice I heard in the study sounded like him."
Lucas frowned.
"Sounded like me?"
Harper nodded.
"But in the chamber I heard the same voice say something Lucas would never say."
"What?"
She looked at Damian.
"He called your father Mr. Cole."
Lucas's anger disappeared.
Their father had been "Dad" or "Father" to both sons, never Mr. Cole.
Damian turned to Victor.
"Pull every camera feed from the last four days."
Victor hesitated.
It lasted less than a second.
"Already did."
"And?"
"The foyer system lost recording at 1:12 a.m. three nights ago."
"Lost it how?"
Victor's expression hardened.
"Manual deletion."
Damian stood.
"By whom?"
Victor met his gaze.
"The deletion was authorized with your biometric signature."
Damian said nothing.
Victor continued.
"And your master card opened your father's study eleven minutes before Harper disappeared."
Lucas looked between them.
Harper whispered, "That's what they wanted."
Damian's phone vibrated on the desk.
An unknown number had sent a single photograph.
It showed Ella asleep in her own bedroom earlier that week.
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Under the image was one sentence.
YOU FOUND THE WRONG PRISONER.
