Chapter 8
Cassandro went back into the hidden room alone with Mrs. Keller.
He searched nothing himself at first.
He simply stood there and tried to imagine Natalie returning to the same place where she had once been imprisoned because it was still safer than walking through the front door of her own home.
Mrs. Keller touched the wall near the cot.
“She hid something here.”
A loose stone came free.
Inside was a folded piece of cloth wrapped around a small photograph.
Not a document.
Not a map.
A photograph.
Audrey.
Taken recently.
She was standing near the estate fountain wearing the yellow dress she had received for her third birthday.
Cassandro looked at Mrs. Keller.
“Natalie took this?”
“She was watching from the tree line.”
His chest tightened.
On the back, Natalie had written one name.
GIDEON.
Cassandro knew it immediately.
Gideon Shaw.
One of his senior captains.
A man who had been inside the Moretti family for twenty-six years.
Damian had attended Gideon’s daughter’s wedding.
Vivienne called him Uncle Gideon.
Cassandro closed his eyes.
One compromised man.
Possibly the most dangerous one.
Mrs. Keller continued searching the compartment and found a second photograph.
Damian.
Gideon.
Another captain named Peter Vale.
Standing together outside Black Cedar Lodge.
Cassandro knew the property.
Old Moretti hunting land three hours north.
Rarely used.
He looked at Mrs. Keller.
“Was Natalie taken there?”
“I think so.”
Damian denied it before Cassandro even showed him the photograph.
That was his mistake.
“You haven’t seen this yet,” Cassandro said.
Damian froze.
Vivienne looked at her brother.
Another fracture.
Cassandro held up the photograph.
“Black Cedar.”
Damian recovered.
“Old picture.”
Mrs. Keller shook her head.
“Two months old.”
Vivienne laughed cruelly.
“And the nanny suddenly knows photography now?”
Mrs. Keller lowered her eyes.
Cassandro did not.
He looked at Damian.
“If Natalie photographed you there two months ago, she knew where you were.”
Damian’s mouth tightened.
“And you knew she was alive.”
Silence.
Cassandro stepped closer.
“You weren’t searching for a missing woman.”
“You were hunting one.”
That finally changed Damian’s face.
May you like
Because there was no softer version of the truth left.
And Black Cedar had just become the first place Cassandro intended to search.
