Chapter 1
I held the brass key between two fingers and looked past Linda toward the locked door at the end of the hallway.
“Tell me what that key opens.”
She said nothing.
Emily did.
“That room.”
Her voice barely carried from the bedroom, but Linda’s reaction told me I had heard correctly. Ryan pushed himself away from the tilted grandfather clock and immediately started talking about Emily being emotional, confused, seven months pregnant.
I ignored him.
One of my men stayed with Emily while I walked toward the door. The brass key fit on the first try.
The room beyond was not a nursery.
It was a bedroom stripped almost bare.
One narrow bed. One chair. Bottled water. A stack of folded maternity clothes. Emily’s prenatal vitamins sat on a high shelf beside her phone, purse, apartment keys, and every piece of identification she normally carried.
I stopped breathing for a second.
On the inside of the door was another lock.
A dead bolt positioned so someone outside could secure it.
I turned.
Emily was standing in the hallway now, one hand beneath her belly. She looked at the room and immediately started shaking.
“How many times?”
“Dad…”
“How many times did they put you in here?”
Tears filled her eyes.
“Eight.”
Ryan snapped that she was lying.
Emily flinched before he even raised his voice.
That reflex answered for her.
I stepped into the room and noticed something beneath the bed.
The pink corner of an envelope.
Then another.
I pulled out a cardboard box.
Inside were birthday cards, letters, photographs, and small packages.
All addressed to Emily.
All from me.
None opened.
I looked at my daughter.
“I sent these.”
Her face collapsed.
“They told me you stopped.”
Silence filled the hallway.
May you like
And suddenly I understood the room was built for more than confinement.
Ryan and Linda had spent months making my daughter believe her father had slowly disappeared from her life.
