Chapter 13 - Serena's Offer
Victor stopped functioning like a billionaire and started functioning like a father.
He ran through the house shouting Ethan's name even though he knew a fourteen-month-old couldn't answer.
Lily checked closets, bathrooms, laundry rooms, dumbwaiter shafts.
Police sealed the estate.
No vehicle had passed the gates.
"He's still here," Lily said.
Victor looked at her. "How do you know?"
"Because Serena wants you scared before she wants you broken."
They found Ethan twenty-three minutes later in the abandoned indoor pool room, asleep in a stroller beneath a maintenance tarp.
He was unharmed.
Beside him sat a phone.
It rang as Victor lifted him.
Serena.
"You found him," she said.
Victor's voice shook. "If you come near my son again-"
"You still think this is about hurting him?"
"You twisted his arm."
"I scared him. There's a difference."
Lily's face twisted with disgust.
Serena continued, "I need you to listen. Grant has the evidence Olivia collected. If the police find him first, he will trade everything for immunity and make me look like the mastermind."
"You are the mastermind."
"No. I am the person who understood how weak your family actually is."
Victor tightened his hold on Ethan.
"What do you want?"
"The memory card from Hannah's envelope and the second phone. Bring them to the old Blackwood theater at six. Alone."
"No."
"Then Grant sends a copy of Lily's employment file to every news outlet in the city."
Lily frowned. "What employment file?"
Serena laughed.
"The one showing she was dismissed from St. Anne's Children's Center for striking a child."
Lily went pale.
Victor looked at her.
"That's not true."
"Of course it isn't," Serena said. "But truth is slow. Scandal is fast."
The call ended.
Daniel asked, "Were you ever at St. Anne's?"
Lily nodded slowly. "I worked there for two years. I left because a supervisor was hitting kids. I reported her. She accused me first. The investigation cleared me, but the original complaint still exists."
Victor understood immediately.
Serena had been preparing Lily as a fall person long before today's incident.
Then a detective entered.
"We found Grant."
Victor turned.
"Where?"
"Not where. Who."
The detective held up a tablet.
On the screen was a traffic camera image from forty minutes earlier.
Grant sat in the passenger seat of a black sedan.
Driving the car was Dr. Aaron Pike.
And in the back seat sat Serena.
May you like
They weren't running from each other.
They were still working together.
