Chapter 2 - Grandma's Christmas Gift
Emma shouldered past Daniel and grabbed the knob. Locked. The old brass handle rattled hard enough to wake the whole house.
“Victoria!” she yelled. “Open it!”
From inside came the soft scrape of furniture and the unmistakable sound of Lily crying. Emma put her ear against the wood. “Sweetheart, tell me you're okay.”
“Mommy?” Lily's voice was small, trembling. “Grandma says I have to go away.”
“Not one inch,” Emma said. “You hear me? I'm right here.”
Daniel slid the silver key into the lock, but it wouldn't turn. He tried again, harder. Emma pushed him aside and saw the key had a blue plastic tag reading WEST WING. Not Lily's room.
“Wrong key,” Emma snapped.
His jaw tightened. “I thought—”
“What did you think?”
The music box on the hallway table continued playing a thin Christmas melody. Emma wanted to smash it. Instead she counted her breaths, because Lily was listening from behind the door and every sound her mother made could become either comfort or another reason to be afraid.
Footsteps sounded at the bottom of the stairs. Their housekeeper, Rosa Alvarez, stood in her winter jacket clutching a purse and looking terrified.
“Mrs. Whitmore,” she called, “the security cameras went off twenty minutes ago.”
Daniel stared at her. “You were told to go home.”
“I did. Then Miss Lily called my old phone.” Rosa's hands shook. “She said they were taking her tonight.”
Emma felt the hallway tilt. Victoria had persuaded Daniel to move his mother into the mansion after a fall that no one had witnessed. Since then, Lily had stopped wanting bedtime stories whenever Grandma was in the room. Emma had blamed the holidays, the new school, her own exhausting work schedule. Now those small silences lined up like warning lights.
A bolt slid behind the bedroom door. Emma stepped back, expecting Victoria. Instead a folded sheet of paper crept through the gap beneath it.
Daniel picked it up. His mother had written in deliberate block letters: YOUR WIFE SIGNED. THE CAR IS WAITING.
A car engine coughed to life outside. Rosa ran toward the front window.
Emma caught Daniel by the sleeve. “Who is waiting?”
He didn't answer. Rosa looked up from the window, her face drained white.
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“There's a little girl in the back seat,” she said. “And she looks exactly like Lily.”
CHRISTMAS EVE BETRAYAL • THE MISSING DAUGHTER
