Chapter 9 - The Wedding That Never Was
Nora had spent the morning shopping for groceries and had never returned. Grace's guilt was instant and brutal. Vanessa had targeted the one person in the mansion who'd treated her like family.
“Let her go,” Grace said to the screen, knowing it was only a recording.
Vanessa's voice continued. “Bring the blue music box to the old Whitmore Theater at midnight. No police. No Moretti. Otherwise your sweet little friend becomes another sad accident.”
Vincent called his security team. Grace snatched the phone from his hand and ended the call.
“You can't storm a theater with fifty armed men.”
“I wasn't going to.”
“You were thinking about it.”
“I was thinking about getting Nora out alive.”
“So was I.” Grace's voice cracked. “She's in this because she tried to protect me.”
Vincent waited until she could meet his eyes. “Then we make a plan together.”
For the next hour they searched the cellar for the music box. In a cabinet behind false-bottomed drawers, Grace found a faded hospital bracelet from her accident. The name on it was not Grace Bennett. It was Grace Vale.
A memory surfaced: a surgeon asking if she recognized a man standing in the doorway. She had said no. The man had cried anyway.
Vincent examined the bracelet. “Someone changed your records.”
“Someone changed my whole life.”
She looked at his scar, the one that disappeared below his collar. “What happened to your neck?”
Vincent hesitated. “When I was seventeen, I tried to stop my father from putting a boy on a truck. One of his men cut me. My father told me I imagined what I saw.”
“Why didn't you leave?”
“My mother was sick. I stayed to protect her. Then I inherited everything I hated, and I convinced myself I could make it clean without giving it up.” He stared at his hands. “I was wrong.”
Grace believed him. She still didn't trust him, and he seemed to understand the difference.
At eleven forty-five, they reached the Whitmore Theater. It had been closed for twenty years, its marquee hanging crooked above boarded windows. Grace carried an empty blue case they had found in the cellar, hoping Vanessa wouldn't notice.
Inside, a spotlight snapped on. Nora sat onstage, wrists bound. Vanessa stood beside her with a remote control.
May you like
“Where's the music?” Vanessa asked.
Then the stage floor began to open beneath Nora's chair.
