Chapter 11 - The Safe Behind the Sideboard
By the time they got home, twilight had settled over the property.
The front door stood half-open.
Vincent’s pulse kicked.
He told Naomi to stay behind him and moved through the house fast, checking each room until he heard Lily’s voice from the dining room.
“Grandpa?”
She was there, standing beside the sideboard in her pink dress, watched over by the house manager. Safe. Vincent’s knees nearly gave out in relief. Naomi ran to her daughter, dropped to the floor, and pulled Lily into her arms so tightly the little girl squealed and then burst into tears.
“Mommy,” Lily sobbed. “I knew you didn’t leave me.”
Naomi buried her face in Lily’s hair.
Vincent would have let the moment last if not for the smashed lock hanging from the sideboard door.
He crossed the room in two strides and opened it.
Behind the lower shelves, half-concealed by decorative panels, sat the old wall safe Naomi had described.
The safe door was closed—but the paint around it was scratched.
Someone had tried to force it and failed.
Naomi looked up at once. “He didn’t know the combination.”
“Do you?”
She nodded weakly and came over with Lily still clinging to one side of her dress. Her hands shook as she turned the dial. The lock clicked.
Inside lay three things: an old leather folio, a velvet jewelry case, and a sealed envelope with Vincent’s late wife’s handwriting on the front.
For Lily.
Naomi stared at it, stunned. “I never knew Mom left that.”
Vincent reached for the folio first.
Inside was the original family holding addendum, exactly as Naomi had said—signed, notarized, and devastating if Marcus ever understood its value. But before Vincent could read beyond the first paragraphs, the back door slammed somewhere deep in the house.
Then footsteps.
Multiple.
Cole’s voice rang out first. “He’s in the dining room!”
Naomi went pale.
Marcus hadn’t come earlier and left.
He’d been in the house already.
May you like
Hiding.
Waiting until Vincent opened the safe for him.
