Chapter 3 - Beneath the Fertilizer Bags
Vincent moved fast.
He didn’t waste a second arguing with Marcus in the doorway. Instead, he scooped Lily up again, grabbed the key and the note, and marched straight back outside through the rear hall before Marcus could gather himself enough to block the way.
The courtyard looked almost unchanged in the warm afternoon sunlight, except for the damage Vincent had left behind. The shattered garage panel gaped open behind Marcus’s fallen body imprint. Fertilizer powder dusted the marble. Cole and Dean were back on their feet, filthy and unsteady, watching him too closely.
Vincent ignored all three men and went straight to the stacked fertilizer bags Naomi had named.
“Move,” he said.
No one did.
Vincent turned his head slightly, just enough for them to see the look on his face.
“I said move.”
Something in his tone made even Marcus hesitate. Cole and Dean backed off first. Marcus stayed where he was, jaw clenched, but he did not come closer.
Vincent set Lily safely on a clean patch of paving beside the wall and told her not to move. Then he started pulling the fertilizer bags down one by one. The first few revealed nothing but dust and stone. The fourth bag scraped over something hard.
A metal ring.
Vincent crouched, cleared the remaining powder away, and found a square steel hatch set flush into the marble, cleverly hidden beneath the stacked bags. The brass key from Bunny slid perfectly into the lock.
The hatch opened downward.
A stale, trapped smell rose from below.
Inside was a shallow storage cavity—too narrow for a person, but large enough to hide valuables. There was a burner phone wrapped in plastic, a flash drive taped beneath the lid, and one pearl earring Vincent recognized instantly.
Naomi’s.
Lily made a tiny sound behind him. “Mommy wore that one to church.”
Vincent’s hand tightened around the earring.
Three weeks. Three weeks Marcus had insisted Naomi had abandoned her daughter. Three weeks of fake sympathy, fake confusion, fake promises to “look into it.”
And here was proof she had left clues inside his own courtyard because she had known she would not be safe long enough to tell Vincent herself.
He reached for the burner phone.
The screen was cracked—but not dead.
As it flickered to life, one unread message appeared.
DON’T LET MARCUS SEE THE VIDEO.
Vincent looked up slowly.
May you like
Marcus was no longer pretending calm.
For the first time since Vincent had arrived, he looked afraid.
