Chapter 4
Marco found the first missing family heirloom in a drawer beneath the bed.
It was a silver music box that had belonged to Emily’s mother.
James had given it to Emily on her eighteenth birthday. After she married Ryan, she left it temporarily at the Bennett estate while the penthouse was being renovated.
Three months later, Ryan collected it himself.
Emily had never seen it again.
“He told me it was damaged,” she said.
Marco opened the lid.
The mechanism played immediately.
Nothing was damaged.
James looked at Ryan.
“Why this?”
Ryan rubbed his bruised jaw. “It reminded her of home.”
That answer came too quickly.
Emily stared.
“You say that like it was a problem.”
Linda sighed. “It was.”
No one spoke.
She continued with the confidence of a woman who had spent too long believing her reasoning would always sound respectable if she delivered it calmly enough.
“Every time Emily became upset, she talked about going back to the Bennett estate. Every argument ended with your name. Every disagreement became a threat that her father would hear about it.”
James stepped closer.
“She was afraid enough to need somewhere else to go.”
Linda rolled her eyes.
“She was spoiled enough to think she always had somewhere else to go.”
Emily’s hand tightened around the music box.
James saw the exact moment she understood.
They had not hidden the object because it was expensive.
They hid it because it reminded her there had been a life before Ryan’s house.
A bedroom.
A father.
A mother’s music box.
A door she could still walk through.
Marco searched another cabinet and found something stranger.
A stack of envelopes.
All empty.
All addressed to Emily.
James recognized his own handwriting on several.
Emily looked at him.
“What was inside?”
“Letters.”
Her face changed.
“You wrote to me?”
“Every month after you stopped answering.”
Ryan closed his eyes.
Too late.
Emily looked at her husband.
“You didn’t just hide gifts.”
May you like
She held up one empty envelope.
“You opened my letters.”
