Chapter 4 - VANESSA’S FIRST MISTAKE
At 1:22 a.m., Vanessa called me.
I let it ring twice.
Then answered.
“Elena.”
Her voice had lost its velvet edge.
“There’s been a misunderstanding.”
“Which one?”
“The penthouse.”
“Mine.”
Silence.
“Julian said—”
“Julian says many things.”
She lowered her voice.
“I didn’t know.”
I looked at Dad.
He could hear her through the speaker.
“Did you know the emerald was mine?”
No answer.
“Vanessa?”
“He told me you gave it back after your grandmother died.”
That was a lie.
My grandmother placed that pendant around my neck on my eighteenth birthday.
Julian had taken it from our home safe six months earlier.
He told me insurance investigators believed a contractor stole it.
I had apologized to the contractor.
The memory made me feel sick.
“Take it off.”
Vanessa did not answer.
“Put it in the manager’s hands.”
“You can’t order me around.”
There she was.
I almost smiled.
“Then keep it.”
She sounded surprised.
“What?”
“Keep wearing stolen property while the cameras are recording.”
The line went dead.
Five minutes later, Mateo sent me a photograph.
The emerald sat inside an evidence pouch.
But beneath his message was another.
Security had reviewed footage from the private garage.
Julian had met a man there four nights earlier.
The man carried documents from Laurent Heritage Bank.
Dad stared at the still image.
“I know him.”
“Who?”
My father’s voice became flat.
May you like
“The banker who handles our resort debt.”
