Chapter 3 - The Footage Victoria Couldn’t Erase
Grace was taken to the hospital with a badly bruised shoulder and a hairline fracture.
Nathan went with her.
So did Lily.
Victoria did not.
Nathan’s security team escorted her from the mansion after collecting her keys.
By 8:00 that evening, Nathan sat beside Grace’s hospital bed with a laptop open between them.
Lily slept against Grace’s uninjured side.
Nathan inserted the memory card.
There were seventeen clips.
He opened the first.
Victoria appeared in the kitchen four days earlier.
Grace had stepped outside to collect a grocery delivery.
Victoria crouched beside Lily.
Nathan turned up the volume.
“Where is it?”
Lily stared at her.
Victoria searched the child’s dress pockets.
Nathan’s expression hardened.
The second clip was worse.
Victoria cornered Grace in the laundry room.
“You were paid to disappear.”
Nathan paused the video.
He looked at Grace.
“Paid by whom?”
Grace swallowed.
“I don’t know.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“I know.”
She looked down at Lily.
“After the night you and I were together, I found out I was pregnant. Before I could tell you, someone contacted me.”
Nathan remembered that night now.
A charity fundraiser in Boston.
Victoria and Nathan had been separated at the time.
Grace hadn’t worked for him then. She had been helping coordinate the event through a catering company.
Nathan and Grace had spent one night together.
Afterward, Nathan had tried calling her.
Her number had been disconnected.
“You vanished.”
“I was threatened.”
Nathan went still.
Grace continued.
“A lawyer told me the Mercer family knew about the pregnancy. He offered me money and said if I contacted you, they would destroy my life.”
“Name.”
“Harold Vance.”
Nathan’s stomach dropped.
Harold had been his grandmother Evelyn’s personal attorney.
“He said my baby would never be recognized as a Mercer.”
“Did my grandmother authorize it?”
“I thought she did.”
“Thought?”
Grace looked toward the silver locket resting unopened inside a hospital evidence bag Nathan had requested.
“Until Evelyn found me herself.”
Nathan stared at her.
“When?”
“Five months before she died.”
Nathan stood so abruptly his chair scraped backward.
“My grandmother knew Lily?”
Grace nodded.
“And she was furious when she learned what had been done.”
Nathan looked at the locket again.
“Is that why she gave Lily this?”
“Yes.”
“What’s inside?”
Grace shook her head.
“I promised Evelyn I would never open it.”
“Why?”
“Because she said the day someone became desperate enough to steal it…”
May you like
Grace’s gaze moved to Nathan.
“…would be the day you were finally ready to learn who betrayed you.”
