Chapter 5 - Isabella’s Secret
Vincent stared at the woman he had planned to marry.
“You went through Grace’s room?”
Isabella’s face hardened. “I went looking for that phone.”
“Why?”
“Because Charles told me Sofia had left something behind that could destroy you.”
Vincent laughed without humor. “And you believed him.”
“I believed the man who had handled your legal affairs since before I met you.”
“Where’s the letter?”
Isabella reached inside the inner seam of her dress and pulled out a folded page sealed in a plastic sleeve.
Dominic stared. “You carried it into the signing?”
“I didn’t know who I could trust.”
Vincent took it.
The handwriting hit him like another voice.
Sofia’s sharp slanted letters.
Vince—
If you’re reading this, then Bellamy finally made his move. Do not confuse the people who lied to you with the people who betrayed you. Some lies were bought. Some were forced. One was mine.
Vincent’s eyes stopped.
He read the next line twice.
I did not leave you. I left to protect our son.
The page shook in his hand.
Dominic whispered, “Son?”
Vincent looked at Grace.
She covered her mouth.
“You knew?”
Grace began crying silently.
“Sofia was pregnant when she disappeared.”
Vincent backed into the table.
Three years of rage tore open at once. He remembered Sofia standing at the bedroom window a week before she vanished, one hand resting strangely over her stomach. He remembered asking if she was sick. She had said she was tired.
“Where is he?”
Grace shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“She didn’t tell me where she was going. She said the less I knew, the safer Emily and I would be.”
Vincent unfolded the rest.
The letter contained an address in Poughkeepsie. A self-storage facility. Unit 314.
And one more sentence.
The pendant is the key.
Vincent looked at Isabella’s necklace.
She stared down at it, confused. “Charles gave this to me six months ago. He said it belonged to his mother.”
Vincent picked it up.
The blue stone was not a stone at all.
It was a tiny plastic cap.
He twisted it free.
Inside the pendant sat a micro-SD card.
Dominic let out a slow breath.
Before anyone could touch it, the intercom clicked on again.
Rocco’s voice said, “You have twenty minutes to bring me the card.”
A child began crying in the background.
May you like
A little boy.
Then Rocco added, “Or Vincent finally meets his son at a funeral.”
