Chapter 4 - THE WOMAN IN THE RED COATThe child was named Lucy.
Haven had erased almost everything else.
Victor placed her in the same private clinic as Ethan.
For forty-eight hours, she barely spoke.
Then she drew a woman in a red coat.
I knew the coat.
My mother owned one.
Ava Vale.
The dead woman who apparently kept leaving clues.
Marcus traced the brass key to a private deposit vault in Manhattan.
The account had been opened twenty-two years earlier.
By Ava Vale.
Victor wanted his men to retrieve the contents.
I refused.
“If my mother built this trail for me, I finish it.”
“You almost died in my house.”
“So did your son.”
His jaw tightened.
We were getting good at arguing.
Marcus was getting good at leaving the room when we started.
Victor finally agreed to accompany me.
The vault contained one object.
A children's music box.
I recognized it instantly.
My father used to play it before bed.
Three notes.
Pause.
Three notes.
Three squeezes.
I love you.
Inside the music box was a microfilm strip.
Marcus had it digitized.
Names appeared.
Judges.
Doctors.
Executives.
Police officers.
Politicians.
And Blackwoods.
Victor stared at his father's name.
Alexander Blackwood.
“Your father was Haven?” I asked.
Victor's expression went blank.
“I don't know.”
The records answered for him.
Alexander had paid Haven for years.
But then the payments stopped.
The final document was a handwritten note.
ALEXANDER WANTS OUT.
CELESTE AUTHORIZED FOR FAMILY ENTRY.
Victor sat down.
His mother had died three months later.
A sudden aneurysm.
No autopsy.
I understood the look on his face.
The past was changing beneath his feet too.
Then Marcus found another name.
Serena Montague.
Not Celeste.
The real Serena Montague had existed.
She was a Blackwood household employee twenty-four years earlier.
She disappeared the week Victor's mother died.
Celeste had stolen her identity.
“Why that name?” I asked.
Victor looked at an old staff photograph.
Then he went pale.
The real Serena was standing beside his mother.
And she was wearing a red coat.
The same red coat Lucy had drawn.
The same coat I remembered my mother wearing.
We enlarged the photograph.
The woman was not Serena.
It was Ava Vale.
My mother.
Victor and I stared at each other.
Our families had known each other before either of us understood the world.
The phone rang.
Marcus answered.
Then he handed it to me.
A woman's voice said, “You finally found the music box.”
Celeste.
Victor reached for the phone.
I stopped him.
“What do you want?”
Celeste laughed.
“Still protecting Blackwoods. Just like Ava.”
“My mother is dead.”
“Is she?”
My heart stopped.
Celeste continued.
“Come to Saint Mercy Station at midnight.”
“No.”
“Then I'll send you your mother's hand first.”
The line went dead.
Victor said, “You're not going.”
I looked at him.
“Yes, I am.”
“Absolutely not.”
“My mother may be alive.”
“And Celeste wants you emotional.”
I recognized my own words.
I hated him for remembering them.
Victor stepped closer.
“She used Ethan to bring you into the open.”
“Then why hurt him?”
“To make me trust you.”
That possibility cut through me.
Celeste had orchestrated everything.
Even my heroism?
No.
I refused to believe that.
I had chosen Ethan.
Celeste had not made me love him.
Victor seemed to understand what I was thinking.
“What you did for my son was real.”
His voice softened.
“Don't let her take that from you.”
For the first time, I saw Victor not as a mafia boss, billionaire, or dangerous man.
I saw a father.
A son.
Someone standing in the ruins of his own history.
“We go together,” I said.
He nodded.
At midnight, Saint Mercy Station was empty.
Except for a woman in a red coat.
She stood beneath the broken clock.
My knees nearly gave out.
She turned.
Older.
Gray in her hair.
A scar across her mouth.
But I knew her.
“Mama?”
The woman began to cry.
Then a gunshot cracked through the station.
Victor threw me down.
The woman in red fell.
May you like
And Celeste's voice came through the speakers.
“Phase Three.”
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