Chapter 14 - THE MAN WHO STOOD GUARD
Marco did not resist arrest.
He looked at Victor once. “I never touched that phone.”
Lily believed him.
The burner had no fingerprints. The coat Marco wore had been hanging in the mudroom for two hours while he helped police outside. Anyone could have planted it.
Quinn examined the payment list. “The ink is fresh. Damien wants us looking at the wrong man.”
A fingerprint on the paper belonged to one of the captured attackers. Under questioning, he admitted a woman had paid him to frame Marco.
The woman was Celia Price.
She had escaped the clinic before formal booking because the arresting officer—one of the corrupt names in Warren’s ledger—released her through a back door.
Celia’s plan was simple. Remove Marco, isolate Lily, and take Ethan during the confusion.
But Lily had already moved Ethan.
She hid with him in the estate’s old wine cellar, accessible through a pantry panel Serena had never known existed. Victor and Quinn used the baby monitor as bait in the safe room.
Celia entered through a kitchen window. She carried a syringe and moved quietly toward the false sound of Ethan crying.
Police arrested her the moment she opened the safe-room door.
In her bag they found passports, cash, and a photograph of Victor’s late wife, Amelia.
The back of the photograph contained a date.
It was the day Amelia died in a car crash.
Celia finally broke.
“My father changed the maintenance report,” she said. “The brakes were not defective.”
Victor’s face lost all color.
“Then what happened?”
Celia looked toward Lily, as if afraid to speak in front of her.
“Serena was in the car with Amelia before the crash. She got out three blocks from the bridge.”
Victor sat down slowly.
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Serena had not entered his life after his wife’s death.
She had been there before it.
