Chapter 3 - THE SAFE HOUSE WAS NEVER SAFE
Lily dropped behind the bed as the first bullet punched through the window.
Glass sprayed across the floor.
A second shot struck the lamp where her head had been.
The guards outside shouted.
Gunfire erupted in the hallway.
Lily crawled toward the bathroom with one arm wrapped around her ribs.
The apartment door shook under a heavy impact.
The lock split.
A masked man stepped inside carrying a suppressed pistol.
Lily grabbed the metal towel rack from the bathroom wall and swung as he crossed the doorway.
The bar struck his wrist.
The pistol clattered across the tile.
He caught Lily by the hair and slammed her against the sink.
Pain flashed white through her skull.
“You were warned,” he said.
It was not the voice from the recording.
He pulled a knife from his jacket.
Lily drove her knee upward.
He twisted aside, but the movement loosened his grip.
She tore free and lunged for the pistol.
The man kicked it beneath the tub.
Then the bedroom wall exploded inward.
Victor came through the adjoining apartment with a shotgun in both hands.
He fired once.
The masked attacker spun backward into the wall.
Victor crossed the room before the man hit the floor.
He kicked the knife away and pressed the barrel beneath the attacker’s chin.
“Who sent you?”
The man laughed wetly through his mask.
Victor tore the fabric away.
Lily did not recognize him.
A small tattoo marked the side of his neck.
A white crown inside a circle.
The man bit down hard.
Victor grabbed his jaw, but it was too late.
The attacker convulsed.
Foam appeared at his lips.
“Cyanide,” Victor said.
Within seconds, the man was dead.
Lily stared at the body.
Victor lowered the shotgun.
“You were followed.”
“This was your safe house.”
“Only six people knew this location.”
“Then one of your six people wants me dead.”
Victor looked toward the shattered window.
“Probably more than one.”
The two hallway guards were alive but wounded.
The attackers had used Blackwood security codes to enter the building.
Someone had also disabled the alarm eighteen seconds before the first shot.
Victor called Julian.
“Move Ethan.”
“Now.”
He listened.
His face changed.
“What do you mean he is gone?”
Lily’s blood turned to ice.
Victor put the call on speaker.
Julian’s voice shook.
“A nurse presented a transfer order signed by Dr. Hale.”
“The floor guards verified it through central security.”
“By the time Hale came out of surgery and denied signing anything, the elevator had already reached the garage.”
“Find the vehicle,” Victor said.
“We are trying.”
“Do not try.”
“Find my son.”
Victor ended the call.
Lily saw fury take over his face, but beneath it was something worse.
Terror.
He turned to her.
“What did Rosa say before the lights went out?”
Lily repeated the call word for word.
Victor focused on one detail.
“The man told you that you should have let the baby cry.”
“Yes.”
“That phrase.”
“What about it?”
“Elena wrote it in her diary.”
Lily went still.
Victor studied her reaction.
“You know my wife’s diary?”
Lily realized too late that she had shown recognition.
“No.”
“You just lied.”
“This is not the time.”
“My son has been taken by someone quoting his dead mother.”
“There will never be a better time.”
Lily moved toward the dead attacker and searched his jacket.
Victor grabbed her wrist.
“Who are you?”
She met his eyes.
“My name is Lily Carter.”
“That is not what I asked.”
Before she could answer, the attacker’s phone began to ring.
Victor released her and picked it up with a cloth.
The screen showed a live video.
Ethan lay inside a white crib beneath a hanging mobile.
His arm was bandaged.
His eyes were open, but he was too exhausted to cry.
A gloved hand entered the frame and placed a card beside him.
Victor held the phone closer.
The card carried a simple message.
BRING THE NANNY TO ST. AGNES BEFORE DAWN.
COME ALONE.
The video ended.
Victor looked at Lily.
“What is St. Agnes?”
“An abandoned orphanage on the South Side.”
“How do you know?”
“My mother grew up there.”
Victor’s expression sharpened.
“And Elena volunteered there.”
Lily said nothing.
He stepped closer.
“You are connected to my wife.”
Lily looked at the baby’s frozen image on the phone.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“She was my sister.”
Victor’s face went completely still.
The rain tapped through the broken window.
Somewhere below, sirens approached.
Victor spoke without raising his voice.
“Elena had no sister.”
“She had a father who had two families.”
“My mother was the family he hid.”
Victor stared at her as if rearranging every memory of the last six months.
“Did Elena know?”
“She found me three years before she died.”
“Why did she never tell me?”
“She was going to.”
“When?”
“The night of the crash.”
Victor’s eyes darkened.
“You took a job in my home under a false name.”
“Carter is my legal name.”
“You concealed your relationship to my dead wife.”
“She asked me to protect Ethan if anything happened to her.”
Victor’s mouth tightened.
“And you decided that meant spying on me.”
“I decided it meant watching the woman Elena feared.”
“Serena.”
Lily nodded.
Victor turned away and pressed one hand to the shattered window frame.
“Why would Elena fear a woman she barely knew?”
“She knew Serena longer than you think.”
Victor looked back.
Lily reached beneath the lining of her damaged dress and removed a flat brass key taped against her skin.
“Elena sent me this three days before she died.”
Victor stared at it.
“What does it open?”
“I do not know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“She included a note.”
“What did it say?”
“Protect Ethan from the woman in white.”
Victor looked toward the card demanding Lily’s presence at St. Agnes.
“Serena wore white the first time Elena met her.”
“She wore white at the charity dinner two days before the crash.”
“She also wore white the day you proposed.”
Victor’s jaw flexed.
Lily could see him resisting the shape of the truth.
“I am going to St. Agnes,” she said.
“No.”
“They asked for me.”
“That makes you bait.”
“Ethan is already bait.”
Victor’s gaze turned lethal.
“Do not say that again.”
“Then do not pretend you can solve this by locking me in another apartment.”
Victor stepped close enough that Lily could see the tiny scar near his left eye.
“I have buried men for less than what you concealed from me.”
“And I have held your son while he screamed because the people around you were too frightened to tell you the truth.”
Neither moved.
Finally, Victor looked at the dead attacker.
“His tattoo belongs to the Crown Saints.”
“A street crew?”
“Once.”
“Now they do private work for politicians, corporations, and anyone who wants violence to look random.”
“Lucien Montigue?”
“Possibly.”
Victor called a number from memory.
“Bring the old ambulance.”
“Two medics.”
“No Blackwood vehicles.”
He ended the call.
“You are coming with me,” he said.
Lily exhaled.
“But you will do exactly what I say.”
“No.”
Victor’s eyes narrowed.
“I will help you save Ethan,” Lily said.
“I will not surrender my judgment to the man whose security chief sold access to his nursery.”
For the first time, a brief, humorless expression crossed Victor’s face.
It was almost respect.
“Then try not to get yourself killed before you finish insulting me.”
They left through the restaurant kitchen and entered an ambulance in the alley.
Victor wore a paramedic jacket over his suit.
Lily lay on a stretcher beneath a blanket.
Two loyal men rode in front.
The city slid past in wet black windows.
Victor checked a pistol and handed Lily a small revolver.
“Have you used one?”
“Yes.”
“Where did a nanny learn to shoot?”
“Elena taught me.”
Victor looked surprised.
“My wife hated guns.”
“She hated needing one.”
He studied Lily, then looked away.
At 4:31 a.m., the ambulance stopped two blocks from St. Agnes.
The orphanage had been empty for twenty years.
Its brick walls rose behind iron fencing and dead trees.
A stone angel above the entrance had lost its face.
Victor and Lily approached through a side courtyard.
The door was unlocked.
Inside, dust covered the floor except for a trail of fresh wheel marks.
They followed the tracks through a chapel and down a narrow corridor.
A baby cried somewhere below them.
Lily started toward the sound.
Victor caught her arm.
“It is a recording.”
She listened again.
The same cry repeated at the same interval.
They descended a service staircase.
At the bottom, they found an empty room with speakers in the corners.
A white crib stood beneath a single light.
It was empty.
On the mattress lay one of Ethan’s blue socks.
Victor picked it up.
A projector clicked on behind them.
Serena appeared on the wall.
Her face was pale and bruised.
She was tied to a chair.
“Victor,” she sobbed.
“They took me from the clinic.”
Lily stared.
Serena had been under guard when they left.
The image shifted.
A clock behind Serena showed 4:36 a.m.
It was live.
A distorted voice filled the room.
“Choose carefully, Mr. Blackwood.”
“Your fiancée is in one building.”
“Your son is in another.”
“You have twenty minutes.”
Two addresses appeared on the wall.
Victor recognized both.
One was a Crown Saints warehouse on the river.
The other was the Blackwood mansion.
The distorted voice continued.
“The nanny knows which one is real.”
Victor turned to Lily.
She looked at the two addresses.
Then she noticed the brass key around Serena’s neck.
The same key Elena had mailed to Lily.
May you like
Only this one was covered in blood.
THE NANNY'S TESTIMONY
