Chapter 6
The second recording was buried under the first file.
Natalie’s voice came through after almost a minute of silence.
She was crying.
Not loudly.
Cassandro almost wished she were.
Quiet grief was harder to hear.
“If you ever find this, I didn’t leave you.”
Cassandro sat down for the first time.
No one spoke.
Natalie continued.
“They made me record the other message. Audrey was upstairs with Mrs. Keller, but Damian told me they could bring her down whenever they wanted.”
Cassandro looked toward Damian.
He said nothing.
“I don’t know where they’re taking me next. Vivienne says if I cooperate, Audrey grows up safe. I don’t believe her.”
A shaky breath.
“Cassandro, don’t trust anyone who tells you I wanted another life.”
His hand closed around Natalie’s bracelet.
“I wanted ours.”
Vivienne looked away.
Cassandro noticed that too.
Then Natalie said the sentence that changed the room again.
“Damian thinks removing me fixes the problem. He doesn’t understand I heard the rest.”
Pause.
“They’re not stopping with me.”
Cassandro’s eyes lifted.
Natalie continued.
“Vivienne said once I’m gone, she can get close enough to you that nobody questions Damian’s men moving through the house.”
Damian shifted.
“They’re planning for you too.”
The recording ended.
Vivienne laughed sharply.
“Three-year-old fear and a dead woman’s voice. That’s what you’re building this on?”
Cassandro looked at her.
“Natalie isn’t dead.”
Vivienne’s expression changed.
Only slightly.
Enough.
Cassandro stood.
“You never said she was.”
Silence.
“You said she left.”
Vivienne recovered.
“Same practical result.”
“No.”
He stepped closer.
“Not even close.”
Damian looked toward the terrace doors.
One of Cassandro’s bodyguards immediately blocked them.
Cassandro saw it.
“You want to leave?”
Damian shrugged.
“This stopped being rational.”
“No.”
Cassandro looked at Natalie’s matching bracelet.
“It just became simple.”
Someone had taken his wife.
Someone had spent years teaching him to believe she chose it.
And those same people had remained close enough to his daughter to keep asking what Natalie had shown her.
May you like
The question was no longer whether Natalie survived the hidden room.
The question was why Vivienne still cared what Audrey remembered three years later.
