Chapter 4
The blue bracelet was not a sentimental object.
Not only that.
Natalie had modified it.
Inside the adult bracelet was a thin strip of plastic no wider than a fingernail.
A storage chip.
Old.
Crude.
Still readable.
My men transferred the files to an isolated laptop.
Three audio recordings.
One photograph.
One short video.
Natalie’s voice filled the underground room.
“If Cassandro hears this, then I was right not to trust the people around him.”
I stopped breathing.
Her voice.
Clear.
Alive.
The recording was dated two years and six months earlier.
Six months after she vanished.
Exactly like the drawing.
She continued.
“Vivienne is not working alone. Damian controls the men. But neither of them started this.”
Vivienne’s expression changed upstairs when I played it later.
Not surprise.
Dread.
The recording named no one else.
Natalie was careful.
She described captains being redirected.
Messages altered before reaching me.
Meetings shifted.
Private conversations repeated back to her by people who should never have heard them.
Someone had been monitoring both of us.
Not merely separating us.
Studying us.
The video was worse.
It showed Vivienne inside the hidden room.
Natalie was off-camera.
Vivienne’s voice:
“You can keep fighting, or you can let Audrey grow up without learning what happens to children whose mothers embarrass powerful men.”
My hands clenched.
Then Natalie said:
“Cassandro will find me.”
Vivienne laughed.
“No. He’ll believe you left because we already taught him to.”
I paused the video.
Silence filled the room.
For three years, I hated Natalie for abandoning us.
They knew I would.
That was the point.
Not just disappearance.
Narrative.
Make Natalie look unstable.
Make me feel betrayed.
Then grief does the rest.
Vivienne looked at me.
“You don’t know what happened after.”
“No.”
May you like
I closed the laptop.
“But now I know where to start.”
