Chapter 2 - Blackout
The ballroom dropped into darkness.
Someone screamed. Glass shattered. A chair scraped hard across the floor.
Vincent moved by instinct.
“Down!”
He swept Emily behind the marble signing table just as a window exploded inward. A suppressed round punched through the white roses where his chest had been two seconds earlier.
Grace hit the floor beside them.
“Emily!”
“I’m here!”
Security lights should have kicked on. They didn’t.
Vincent heard Dominic curse near the fireplace. Isabella was breathing fast somewhere to the left.
Charles Bellamy said nothing.
That bothered Vincent most.
“Tony!” Vincent shouted toward the hall. “Lock the house!”
No answer.
Another round struck the wall.
Vincent pulled a compact pistol from the ankle holster he had promised Isabella he no longer wore at home.
“Grace, take Emily through the service corridor. Pantry stairs. Basement laundry room. Stay there until I come.”
Grace shook her head violently. “No. Not the basement.”
Vincent looked at her.
Even in the dark, he could hear the terror in her voice.
“Why?”
Before she could answer, the emergency generator finally coughed alive. Red backup lights glowed along the walls.
The ballroom looked like a crime scene already. Broken crystal glittered on the carpet. White petals floated in spilled champagne.
Charles Bellamy was gone.
So was the folder containing the trust papers.
“Where is he?” Vincent snapped.
Dominic pointed toward the west corridor. “He ran.”
“You let him?”
“I was getting Isabella down!”
Isabella stood behind the piano, one hand pressed to her shoulder. Blood darkened the ivory fabric.
Vincent’s anger vanished into action.
“Hit?”
“Grazed,” she said through clenched teeth. “I’m fine.”
Emily crawled from behind the table with the blue phone still clutched to her chest.
“Mr. Moretti?”
“Stay down.”
“There’s another message.”
Grace grabbed her wrist. “Emily, stop.”
But Vincent heard the word another.
He knelt.
“How many?”
Emily looked at the screen. “Three voice messages. The first one played because the phone woke up when I charged it.”
Vincent’s eyes moved to Grace.
“You had this phone?”
Grace closed her eyes.
“For three years,” she said.
Dominic took a step toward her. “You hid Sofia’s phone for three years?”
Grace flinched.
“It wasn’t Sofia’s phone.”
Vincent felt something cold move through him.
“Then whose was it?”
Grace looked toward the dark doorway where Bellamy had disappeared.
“Mine,” she said. “And Sofia called it the night she vanished.”
May you like
From the hallway came a single gunshot.
Then Charles Bellamy screamed.
