Chapter 14 - The Empty Hospital Bed
I reached the hospital twenty minutes later.
Emily’s room was empty.
The window was closed.
The hallway cameras had failed during the alarm.
One nurse saw a man wearing emergency medical clothing moving a wheelchair toward the service elevator.
Nobody stopped him.
The man had an identification badge.
Samuel Trent.
Bell’s security contact.
“No,” I said.
Not again.
Not after we had found her.
Not after Noah had spent one night believing his mother was coming home.
Federal agents searched every exit.
A discarded wheelchair was discovered in the underground garage.
Emily’s hospital bracelet lay on the seat.
There was no blood.
No indication of violence.
Then my phone received a message.
A photograph.
Emily sat inside a car.
Her eyes were open.
Beside her was Bell.
Under the photograph were six words.
BRING MARCUS IF YOU WANT HER BACK.
I showed the agents.
They immediately began tracing the number.
It disappeared within seconds.
Marcus was under federal protection.
When I told him, he turned gray.
“He wants to trade me.”
“For Emily.”
“No.”
I stared at him.
“You don’t get to say no.”
“Daniel, Bell will kill both of us.”
“He has my wife.”
Marcus stood.
“And he wants me because I know where the final records are.”
“What records?”
Marcus looked at Rebecca.
Then at me.
“Emily’s original financial evidence.”
“You told me you didn’t have it.”
“I lied.”
Rage surged through me.
“Where?”
“Father’s old bank.”
“What?”
“Emily gave me an envelope the morning she disappeared.”
“You had her evidence for three years?”
“I never opened it.”
“Why?”
“Because she told me opening it would make me responsible.”
I laughed in disbelief.
“You were already responsible.”
Marcus lowered his head.
“I know.”
The envelope sat inside a private vault registered under our father’s name.
Federal agents recovered it.
Inside were documents connecting Bell, Victoria, and Marcus to the foundation transfers.
But there was something else.
A handwritten ledger.
It contained dates of payments to Samuel Trent.
The payments began four years earlier.
Before Samuel officially worked for me.
Which meant Bell had planted him long before Victoria entered my life.
At the bottom of the ledger was one final name.
David Hale.
Our father.
Marcus stared at it.
“No.”
I looked at him.
“What?”
“Dad knew Bell.”
Our father had supposedly severed every connection with the Bell family decades earlier.
Yet the ledger showed payments authorized through one of his private accounts.
Emily had discovered something none of us understood.
Bell’s operation had not begun after our father died.
It had begun with him.
Then the agents traced Bell’s message.
A brief signal hit a tower near the abandoned Hale textile mill outside the city.
The mill had belonged to our father.
Marcus looked at me.
“I know that place.”
“So do I.”
“No.”
He shook his head.
“You know the factory.”
“I know the rooms underneath it.”
I stared.
“What rooms?”
“Our father built a private archive below the east wing.”
“Why?”
May you like
Marcus swallowed.
“To hide everything he never wanted his sons to see.”
