Chapter 1
“Who was coming for my daughter tonight?”
Beatrice stared up at me from the collapsed floral screen.
Caleb stopped trying to rise beside the overturned dessert cart.
The device remained in my palm.
Its speaker crackled once more.
Then the unknown man spoke.
“Beatrice?”
Nobody answered.
I lifted the device closer.
“Try again.”
Silence.
Then:
“Who is this?”
I looked at Caleb.
His face had gone gray.
Good.
“You called my house asking whether my daughter was alone.”
The speaker went dead.
Caleb moved.
One step.
Toward the side door.
My bodyguards closed it before he reached the carpet.
I crouched beside Nina.
Her cheek was red from Beatrice’s slap, but she was otherwise steady. She held the broken brass bell in both hands as though she had done something wrong.
“I broke it.”
“No.”
I touched her hair.
“You found something.”
She looked at the tiny device.
“Bug?”
I almost smiled.
“Something like that.”
Then she whispered:
“Aunt Beatrice said don’t ring when Daddy home.”
My eyes lifted.
“What?”
Nina pointed toward Beatrice.
“She says bell is only when Daddy gone.”
The room changed.
I looked at my cousin.
“How long have you been teaching her that?”
Beatrice said nothing.
Nina continued because nobody had told her to stop.
“When Daddy study, ring once.”
My jaw tightened.
“And then?”
She thought.
“Uncle Caleb comes.”
Caleb closed his eyes.
There.
Not merely listening.
Signaling.
I stood.
The old brass dinner bell sat on our sideboard every night.
Nina loved it because months earlier I had jokingly told her she could ring it when dinner was ready and I was buried in council meetings.
A childish way to call her father.
Beatrice had turned it into something else.
I handed the device to my security chief, Luca Ferris.
“Trace every signal it exchanged tonight.”
He nodded.
Then one guard entered from the front corridor.
“Boss.”
“What?”
“There’s a black SUV parked beyond the south service gate.”
Caleb looked toward Beatrice.
Wrong move.
The guard continued.
“Two men inside. Child booster seat in the back.”
Nina pressed closer to my leg.
I looked down at my daughter.
Then back at the couple who had been eating steak ten feet away while strangers waited outside to take her.
May you like
The bell had never been monitoring my family.
It had been telling someone when my child could be reached.
