Chapter 1 - The Six Words That Stopped the Music
"There is no baby in there."
The little girl said it with one small hand resting on my fiancee's stomach, and two hundred people at the Vale Hotel stopped breathing.
Vanessa Price grabbed her belly and screamed. Her champagne glass hit the marble and burst like a gunshot. I caught her before she fell, one arm around her waist, my other hand already reaching for my phone.
"Call a doctor!" someone shouted.
"She hit me," Vanessa gasped. "Daniel, that child hit our baby!"
But I had seen the girl. She couldn't have weighed fifty pounds. She had crossed the ballroom in a pale green dress, a silver tiara crooked on her brown hair, and touched Vanessa as gently as somebody checking whether a sleeping kitten was warm.
"I didn't hit her," the girl said.
Vanessa's nails dug into my sleeve. "Get her away from me. Now."
My aunt Evelyn stood near the cake with her mouth open. Beside the service doors, our longtime housekeeper, Rosa Alvarez, gripped a silver tray so hard her knuckles had turned white.
A security guard moved toward the child. I raised a hand.
"Nobody touches her. What's your name, sweetheart?"
"Ellie Bennett. I'm six."
"Ellie, why would you say that?"
She looked from Vanessa's purple gown to my face. There was no mischief in her eyes. Only fear, and the kind of determination no child should have to learn.
"Because I saw her take the baby off."
A sharp murmur ran through the ballroom.
Vanessa went still against me. Not hurt. Not dizzy. Still.
"That's disgusting," she snapped. "Somebody put her up to this."
Rosa set the tray down and hurried forward. "Mr. Vale, please listen to the girl."
"Rosa?" I stared at her. She had helped raise me after my mother died. I had never heard her sound frightened.
A man in a gray suit stepped out from behind the flowers. Cole Voss, the attorney handling my father's estate, smiled without warmth. "Daniel, not here. The guests are filming. Take Vanessa upstairs. We'll settle the disruption privately."
My phone vibrated. A message from Cole flashed across the screen: SIGN BEFORE MIDNIGHT. TRUST WINDOW CLOSES.
Then Ellie opened her tiny fist. Inside was a folded piece of paper, darkened with what looked like dried blood.
"My mommy said you'd know what to do," she whispered. "But she told me not to let the man with the gray tie see this."
May you like
Cole's tie was gray.
And his smile disappeared.
