Chapter 3 - The Girl in the Photograph
Grant Mercer refused to speak for three hours.
Dante watched him through the one-way glass of the security room beneath the east wing.
Grant sat at a metal table with one wrist handcuffed to a steel ring. Dr. Park had treated the wound in his arm after determining the bullet had passed cleanly through the muscle. He had lost blood, but not enough to weaken the arrogance in his expression.
Nico entered carrying a clear evidence bag.
Inside it was a photograph.
A teenage girl stood beside Aria near a lake, both of them laughing into the wind. The girl had Aria’s dark eyes but lighter hair and a scattering of freckles across her nose.
“Elena Sterling,” Nico said. “Seventeen. Enrolled at Saint Victoria Academy outside Worcester.”
“Was enrolled,” Dante replied.
Nico frowned.
Dante placed his phone on the table. The school’s headmistress had answered his call ten minutes earlier.
Elena Sterling had been withdrawn by her father that morning.
No forwarding address had been provided.
“Victor moved fast,” Nico said.
“He knew Grant might fail.”
“Or Grant sent confirmation before we caught him.”
Dante looked through the glass.
“Bring Aria downstairs.”
Nico did not move immediately.
“She may not be ready.”
“She needs to see what we found.”
Five minutes later, Aria entered the observation room wearing black trousers and a cream sweater Lucia Rossi had left outside her door.
Lucia, Dante’s younger sister, stood beside her.
Unlike Dante, Lucia wore her emotions openly. The moment she had seen Aria’s bruises, fury had transformed her elegant face. She had introduced herself without attempting an embrace and had spent the morning arranging clothing, toiletries, and a new phone that contained no tracking software.
Aria noticed the photograph in Nico’s hand.
Her face lost all color.
“Where did you get that?”
“Grant took it from your room,” Dante said.
She grabbed the evidence bag.
“Elena.”
“Your father removed her from school.”
Aria turned on Dante. “You called the academy?”
“Yes.”
“You gave them your name?”
“I did not need to. Victor had already reached them.”
She pressed the photograph against her chest.
“He’ll take her to the country house.”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
Dante studied her.
Aria’s voice rose. “I don’t know. My father owns properties through companies that change names every few months. He keeps Elena isolated because she saw too much.”
“Saw what?”
Aria looked toward the one-way glass.
Grant was staring directly at them, though he could not see through it.
She stepped closer.
“He knows we’re here.”
“He is guessing.”
“No. Grant never guesses.”
Inside the interview room, Grant leaned toward the glass.
“Tell the bride,” he called, “that her sister sends her love.”
Aria rushed for the door.
Dante caught her wrist.
The instant his fingers closed around her, she gasped.
He released her immediately.
“Do not go in there.”
“He knows where she is.”
“That is why he wants you in the room.”
“I can make him talk.”
“He has spent eleven years studying your fear. He believes he can use it.”
“He can.”
Her honesty struck Dante harder than denial would have.
Aria looked toward the door. “He knows what my father does when one of us disobeys.”
Lucia moved closer. “What does he do?”
Aria lowered her gaze.
Grant’s voice carried through the speaker again.
“Time is running out, princess.”
Dante opened the door and entered the interview room alone.
Grant smiled.
“Congratulations on the wedding.”
Dante sat across from him. “Where is Elena?”
“Safe with her family.”
“Her sister is her family.”
“Not anymore. Aria belongs to you.”
“No one belongs to me.”
Grant laughed. “You expect me to believe the great Dante Rossi married a Sterling and did not collect his payment?”
Dante leaned back.
“I think Victor sent you to retrieve something from Aria’s dress. When you did not find it, you took the photograph instead.”
Grant’s smile faded slightly.
“You transmitted the school information. Victor removed Elena before we could reach her. That means Elena is leverage.”
“Against what?”
“The brass key.”
Behind the glass, Aria stopped breathing.
Grant noticed the change in Dante’s expression.
“So she still has it.”
Dante realized his mistake.
Grant had not known whether the key remained hidden.
Now he did.
The security lights flickered.
Nico touched his earpiece.
“What was that?”
A guard’s panicked voice answered through the radio.
“We lost power to the north wing.”
The lights went out.
Emergency lamps flooded the room in red.
Dante was on his feet before Grant moved.
Grant pulled violently against the handcuff. The metal ring beneath the table snapped free.
It had been weakened in advance.
Grant swung the loose chain toward Dante’s throat. Dante blocked it with his forearm, drove Grant against the wall, and struck him once in the ribs.
The door burst open.
Nico entered with two guards.
Grant laughed despite the pain.
“You think this was about escaping?”
An alarm sounded upstairs.
Aria’s bedroom.
Dante ran.
He took the stairs two at a time, with Nico and Lucia behind him. Smoke rolled through the second-floor hallway. Flames climbed the curtains near Aria’s suite.
A guard lay unconscious near the doorway.
Dante pulled his sweater over his mouth and entered the smoke.
The fire had started in the closet.
Aria’s wedding dress was burning.
Someone had poured fuel across the fabric.
Dante smothered the flames with a blanket while Nico searched the adjoining rooms. Lucia guided Aria back from the smoke.
When the fire was extinguished, little remained of the dress except black silk, twisted wire, and fragments of ivory lace.
Aria dropped to her knees beside it.
“No.”
“The key?” Dante asked.
She held it up.
“It’s here.”
“Then what did they want to destroy?”
Aria searched through the wet ashes.
Her fingertips found a burned strip of fabric near the collar.
Something metallic had been stitched inside.
Not the key.
A tiny recording device.
Aria stared at it.
“I didn’t put this there.”
Dante crouched beside her.
“Then who did?”
She remembered two maids adjusting the high collar before the ceremony. One had worked for Victor. The other had arrived from the designer’s studio.
The device had recorded every word spoken in the bedroom.
Including Dante telling Aria she was free to leave.
Including his promise that no one would touch her without permission.
Victor had expected proof that his daughter’s marriage had been completed.
Instead, the recording proved Dante had refused to follow the treaty.
Aria looked toward the ruined doorway.
“The fire wasn’t meant to destroy the key.”
Dante understood.
“It was meant to destroy the evidence before we found it.”
A phone rang inside the room.
It was the new phone Lucia had given Aria.
No one outside the compound had the number.
Aria answered with shaking hands.
Victor Sterling spoke without greeting.
“You have forty-eight hours to return what your mother stole.”
Aria closed her eyes.
“And Elena?”
Her father’s voice remained calm.
May you like
“Your sister’s future depends on whether you finally learn to obey.”
The line went dead.
