Chapter 6 – THE LOCKET ON THE WET ASPHALT
The interrogation room felt entirely devoid of oxygen.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move.
“She didn’t hit her by accident,” Serena repeated, her voice dripping with venom. “Elena went there to get the locket back. She tried to take it from the girl. But Maya ran into the street.”
Vincent slammed his fist onto the metal table, the sound echoing like a gunshot.
Serena jumped, her cruel smile instantly vanishing.
“You disgusting, vile creature,” Vincent hissed, his face twisted in pure rage. “You let me believe Elena was a good woman who made a tragic mistake. You used her guilt to steal from me.”
“She was a monster!” Serena yelled back. “I just cleaned up her messes! I deserved that money for keeping her secrets!”
“You deserve exactly where you are,” Vincent said coldly.
He grabbed my arm gently. “Come on, Caroline. We’re done here.”
I let him guide me out of the room. My legs felt like lead.
When we got into the SUV, Vincent didn’t start the engine right away.
He turned to me, his dark eyes filled with a sorrow I had never seen in him before.
“Caroline. I am so deeply sorry.”
I wiped my face. The tears were gone now, replaced by a hollow, aching numbness.
“It wasn’t your fault, Mr. Russo.”
“Vincent,” he corrected softly. “Call me Vincent.”
He started the car. “Where is the locket now?”
“The police gave it back to me after the accident,” I whispered. “It’s in my room at the estate. In my memory box.”
“Then we’re going home.”
We drove back to the mansion in silence. When we arrived, Diane was sitting in the kitchen, reading a book while Lily slept peacefully upstairs.
She looked up, seeing the exhaustion on our faces.
“I’ll make some tea,” Diane said quietly, knowing not to ask questions.
Vincent and I walked down to the basement, to the small, sparse room I had lived in for eight months as a maid.
I pulled my suitcase out from under the bed. Inside, tucked away beneath my old clothes, was a small wooden memory box.
My hands shook as I opened it.
Inside rested Maya’s yellow hospital beanie, her favorite pacifier, and the silver locket.
I pulled the locket out. The silver was scratched, dented from the impact of the car.
Vincent stood beside me. “May I?”
I nodded, handing it to him.
He didn’t open the main clasp. Instead, he ran his thumb along the bottom edge, finding a tiny, almost invisible seam. He pressed hard.
A hidden compartment popped open.
Inside was a tiny, microscopic micro-SD card.
David had hidden it perfectly.
We took the card upstairs to Vincent’s study. He inserted it into his laptop.
There was only one audio file.
Vincent clicked play.
The recording was scratchy, filled with static, but the voices were clear.
“You think you can just pay me off again, Elena?” It was David’s voice. Arrogant. Cruel.
“I gave you fifty thousand dollars to disappear!” Elena’s voice was frantic, terrified.
“I want more. Or I tell Vincent everything. About us. About the offshore accounts. About Serena.”
“Leave Serena out of this!”
“Why? She’s the one moving the money for you. She’s just as dirty as we are.”
The recording clicked off.
Vincent stared at the screen.
“It wasn’t just blackmail,” Vincent murmured. “Serena wasn’t just the assistant. She was the architect.”
He turned to me.
“Serena orchestrated the whole thing. She used David to siphon money out of my accounts. When David got greedy, she had Robert kill Elena so she could take complete control.”
It was a web of lies so deep, so purely evil, that it was hard to comprehend.
But as I looked at the laptop screen, I noticed something else in the folder.
A single photograph.
I pointed at it. “Vincent, what is that?”
He clicked on the file.
The image opened, and my heart stopped for the second time that night.
It was a picture of my adoptive mother.
But she wasn’t standing in our old apartment in Queens.
She was standing in front of Vincent’s mansion, holding a young girl by the hand.
A girl who looked exactly like me.
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