Chapter 6
The gas smelled sweet.
Captain Torres shouted for everyone to cover their mouths.
I wrapped my jacket around Ethan’s face while Lily searched for the security controls. The mansion had been designed to become a fortress during an emergency.
Now Richard was using it as a trap.
“The windows are reinforced,” Lily said. “Only the control room can release them.”
“Where is it?”
“Basement.”
We moved through the dining room as the gas thickened.
Ethan stumbled.
I lifted him onto my back.
“Keep your eyes open, buddy.”
“I’m sleepy.”
“I know. Talk to me.”
“About what?”
“Tell me what the Easter Bunny brought you.”
He whispered about chocolate eggs while we reached the basement stairs.
Two state officers forced the control-room door open. Inside, every screen displayed the same live message.
Richard sat inside a dark vehicle.
“You took my son and my company,” he said. “Now you lose everything.”
Lily stepped toward the camera.
“You beat me.”
“You embarrassed me.”
“You locked Ethan upstairs.”
“My mother took him. I didn’t know.”
“But you spent years making him afraid.”
Richard’s face changed when he saw Ethan on my back.
“Give me my son.”
“No,” Lily said.
“He belongs to me.”
“He belongs to himself.”
Captain Torres found the ventilation override, but it required a code.
Lily tried Richard’s birthday.
Rejected.
She tried Margaret’s.
Rejected.
Ethan lifted his head.
“Try my birthday.”
Lily entered it.
The ventilation system reversed.
Clean air moved through the basement.
The shutters opened, and emergency teams rushed inside.
Richard ended the call.
Technicians traced the signal to an Ashford warehouse. By the time police arrived, the vehicle was empty.
But Grace was found inside the building.
She was alive.
Caldwell had tied her inside an office and demanded the memory card. She convinced him Ethan’s rabbit remained at the hospital, buying enough time for us to find it first.
Grace identified Caldwell as Sofia’s killer.
Eight years earlier, she saw him carry Sofia from Room 814 after Richard attacked her. Margaret paid him to hide the body and close the investigation.
“Where did he take her?” Captain Torres asked.
Grace remembered a construction project behind the oldest Ashford hotel.
State investigators searched the foundation.
They found human remains.
Dental records confirmed Sofia’s identity.
Richard had assaulted her.
Caldwell had killed her to protect him.
Margaret had paid for both crimes to disappear.
The discovery transformed the case into a federal investigation involving organized corruption, money laundering, and murder.
Margaret requested a meeting with Lily.
She had learned Richard escaped and Caldwell planned to blame everything on her.
Lily did not want to go.
I told her she did not owe Margaret anything.
“She knows where Richard is,” Lily said. “If I can help stop him, I need to hear her.”
We met Margaret through protective glass.
Without the mansion, expensive clothes, and servants, she looked smaller.
“Richard has lost control,” she said.
“He learned control from you,” Lily replied.
“I protected him.”
“You taught him that money erased consequences.”
Margaret offered to identify Richard’s hiding place if prosecutors reduced her charges.
She claimed he had taken Caldwell to the Ashford family lodge near the Canadian border.
“He’ll kill Caldwell and make it look like they died escaping together,” she said.
“Why warn us?”
“Because Richard called me from the lodge. He said I was next.”
Even after everything, Margaret’s first concern was herself.
Captain Torres organized a federal raid.
Before agents left, a nurse rushed into the meeting room.
Ethan had collapsed in the waiting area.
At the hospital, doctors found the same sedative Margaret had placed in Lily’s tea.
Someone had hidden it inside his Easter candy.
The candy came from Richard.
The dose was not fatal, but Ethan’s blood contained another substance.
A slow-acting poison was damaging his kidneys.
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Doctors estimated he had been exposed for months.
Richard had been poisoning his own son.
