Chapter 5
There were twelve Sloan signet rings in active use.
Mine.
Audrey’s.
Elise’s.
My sons’ cousins.
Two uncles.
Several branch heads.
The photograph showed only a hand.
Large.
Older.
One distinctive detail.
A missing little finger.
I knew immediately.
My cousin Martin Sloan.
Seventy.
My father’s sister’s son.
Old-school.
Polite.
Always called my daughters “princess.”
I almost laughed.
The body protects itself with absurd reactions when betrayal becomes too familiar.
“Where is Martin?”
Rafe answered.
“At Arthur Vale’s dinner in Jersey.”
“Bring him.”
Celia whispered:
“Everett…”
I turned.
She looked terrified.
“Martin didn’t hurt Elise.”
“Interesting.”
I stepped closer.
“I didn’t say he did.”
Another mistake.
“What did he do?”
Celia’s hands shook.
Martin had funded Brent’s operation from the beginning.
Not for money.
For control.
Several Sloan marriages were unstable after I changed family rules six years earlier.
I stopped requiring spouses to ask elders before separating.
Martin hated it.
Called divorce contagious.
Called independence selfish.
Brent offered a private solution.
Delay women.
Scare them.
Give husbands time to “fix” the situation.
No one needed to know.
Until Elise did.
My daughter had helped one woman leave a violent marriage quietly.
Martin found out.
That made Elise dangerous.
Not because she was my daughter.
Because women trusted her.
“She came here for the photographs,” Celia said.
“What happened?”
“Martin was already here.”
He ordered Brent to lock her upstairs while they decided what to do.
Elise threatened to tell me everything.
Martin laughed.
He told her I would never believe a few unhappy wives over senior family.
My hands tightened.
Elise apparently answered:
“My father believes me.”
Celia started crying.
“She was so sure.”
That sentence hurt more than anything.
Because she had been right.
I would have.
If she had reached me.
“Then what?”
Celia whispered:
“They moved her.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
Brent shouted:
“She left willingly.”
I turned.
“After four hours locked in a room?”
No answer.
Then Rafe found something inside an old bakery apron.
A folded delivery receipt.
One destination circled.
HARBOR HOUSE.
I knew the property.
An abandoned Sloan lakeside retreat.
May you like
Closed for eight years.
According to Martin.
