Chapter 15 - THE NIGHT THE ESTATE WENT DARK
At 2:18 a.m., power to the estate failed.
Backup generators activated.
Then stopped.
Someone had disabled the fuel feed.
Security radios went down.
The east gate opened.
Not by force.
By valid access code.
Roman had given someone the master emergency credential.
Vincent moved my mother immediately.
Delia ran upstairs.
I stopped her.
“Where are you going?”
“Her medication.”
“Leave it.”
“She needs it.”
Of course she went anyway.
The woman had already been injured once because of my family.
She still ran toward my mother.
Minutes later, smoke began to fill the service corridor.
Not a large fire.
A diversion.
Someone entered the cellar while the guards were responding.
By the time power was restored, the hidden compartment behind the wine racks had been smashed open.
Whatever Celeste believed was inside, she still thought we had not found it.
Then Vincent shouted from upstairs.
My mother had stopped responding.
An ambulance arrived.
Delia rode with her.
I followed.
For two hours, I sat outside intensive care believing my obsession with the truth had killed the woman I was trying to protect.
The doctor finally came out.
“Stroke extension.”
My stomach dropped.
“Will she recover?”
“We don’t know.”
For the first time in years, I had no command to give.
No threat.
No plan.
Nothing.
Delia sat beside me.
Her injured fingers were still taped.
“I should have ended this earlier.”
“How?”
“I know ways.”
“Yes.”
She looked at me.
“And that’s exactly why Ewan was afraid.”
I hated her for saying it.
Because I knew she was right.
I had reached the lowest point of my life surrounded by every kind of power and unable to use any of it.
Then Delia remembered something.
“The scarf.”
“What?”
“Celeste’s scarf from the conservatory.”
I looked at her.
“What about it?”
“When she dragged me, it caught on the cellar latch.”
Delia’s eyes widened.
“There was something sewn into the edge.”
We had bagged the scarf as evidence.
Inside its hem, investigators found a tiny brass key.
Not Delia’s.
May you like
Celeste’s.
And stamped on it was a number.
