Chapter 10 - THE LAKE HOUSE
The drive to Lake Geneva took ninety minutes.
Victor made it in fifty-eight.
Police vehicles followed with lights off. Lily sat beside him despite every order to remain behind.
“You’re not going inside,” Victor said.
“She knows Ethan trusts me. If she gets near him, my voice may be the only thing that keeps him calm.”
Victor gripped the wheel. “You have already done enough.”
“No. I did what anyone should do.”
“That is not true,” he said. “Most people looked away.”
The lake house stood dark among the trees. The front door was open. One guard lay unconscious in the entryway, breathing but bleeding from a cut above his eye.
Ethan’s crib was empty.
A baby monitor hissed on the dresser.
Then Serena’s voice came through it.
“Victor, bring the original trust to the boathouse. Come alone, or your son goes into the water.”
Lily covered her mouth.
Victor’s face became unreadable.
Quinn whispered, “We surround the property.”
“No lights,” Lily said. “Ethan is afraid of loud noises when he’s tired. If Serena panics, he’ll panic.”
Victor took the folder recovered from the hotel and walked toward the frozen shoreline.
The boathouse doors stood open. Serena waited inside beside a small motorboat. Ethan was strapped into a carrier on the rear seat, crying quietly.
“Give me the trust,” Serena ordered.
Victor placed the folder on the dock.
“Let him go.”
She kicked the folder toward herself. “You never loved me.”
“I loved the person you pretended to be.”
Her eyes flashed.
Behind the wall, Lily crawled along a maintenance walkway and reached the boat’s fuel line. She pulled it free.
Serena heard the click.
She spun and saw Lily.
May you like
“You,” she whispered.
Then she lifted Ethan from the carrier and stepped backward onto the thin ice.
