"Of course I knew," Bruce snapped. "Why do you think I didn't want her at Regents in the first place? But the stubborn girl insisted, just like her mother." He shook his head, a flash of genuine pain crossing his features. "She's always wanted to know why Lissa left. I couldn't bring myself to tell her the truth, that her mother was a selfish, cruel woman who'd sell her own child for the right price." Killingham hesitated, something like regret flickering in his eyes.
"Bruce, there's something you should know. Cadence did find her mother. At the Alumni Dinner. It... wasn't a good meeting." Bruce went very still, his knuckles whitening around the handle of his cane.
"What are you saying?"
"Lissa was there," I said, filling the silence when Killingham hesitated. "She goes by Alyssa Knotty now. She's married to Dexter Knotty." The colour drained from Bruce's face.
“She married him?” For the first time since he'd entered the room, he looked shaken. "Lyssa was here? At the Dinner? And you didn't think to tell me this, James?"
"I had no idea she would be there; they haven’t been as active in the Trivium for the last few years," Killingham insisted, genuine distress in his voice. "I didn't know she was back until that night. She wasn’t even on the guest list until the very last minute." Bruce's breathing had quickened, his composure cracking.
"If that bitch is back on the scene," he said, his voice barely above a whisper, "then Cade is in more danger than any of us thought." The fear in his eyes sent ice through my veins. What could possibly frighten The Gavel?
"These texts," Ryder interrupted, looking up from the phone with a gleam in his eyes. "These aren't from Cade."
"What?" Bruce turned to him sharply.
"I mean, of course, they aren’t, but the phrasing, the way they're structured, it's not how she writes," Ryder explained, handing the phone back to Bruce. "She never uses phrases like 'super busy' or 'catch you later.' And look at the timestamps from a few weeks ago, they're all sent between 2 and 4 PM. Cade would have had classes during those hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays." I exchanged glances with Cole. Even in the depths of his obsessive grief, Ryder knew Cade's schedule by heart, knew the rhythm of her speech well enough to spot a fake. It was both touching and disturbing.
Bruce examined the phone with renewed intensity, his jaw tightening as the implications sank in.
"Someone's been sending these to keep me in the dark," he said, his voice deadly calm. "Someone who knows enough about her to be convincing, but not enough to get the details right."
“It’s more than that,” Ryder carried on, pointing to something on the screen. “These messages go back way before she was taken, right back to almost the beginning of the year.” He looked up at me, his eyes shining, “Whoever has been doing this has been doing it for months, planning it. I can’t say for sure, but it could be the same person who was sending Cade the notes, the one responsible for the Halloween incident.”
“Notes? Halloween incident?” Bruce snapped, “What the fuck is going on in this place? I want every scrap of information you have on my granddaughter's disappearance," he told us, hisvoice flat. “Every lead, every theory, every dead end. And I want to know exactly what happened with her mother at that dinner.”
"Mr Turner," Williams ventured, mopping his brow with a handkerchief. "Perhaps we should-"
"You don't get to speak," Bruce cut him off without looking at him. "You lost that right when you allowed my granddaughter to be whipped and branded based on falsified evidence." Williams seemed to physically shrink in his chair. I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
"We have theories," Cole said, breaking his silence. "About who might have taken her." Bruce turned to him, eyes sharp.
"Go on."
"The threatening notes she received before her disappearance," Cole explained. "We initially thought they might be from one of the other girls, Julia Latters or someone working with her, but the timing never quite made sense, and Julia was more brazen about her dislike of Cade."
“Plus Julia has been with her family in the south of France all Christmas break,” I said. “We had visual confirmation of it.”
"We should focus on what we know," Killingham interjected, his voice steady despite the tension crackling through the room. "The van that took her was professional, untraceable. The photo sent afterward was designed to taunt, but revealed nothing about her location. These aren't the actions of an amateur or someone acting on impulse."
"Show me the photo," Bruce demanded. I hesitated, not wanting to inflict that image on anyone else, let alone Cade's grandfather. But Cole was already pulling out his phone, bringing up the horrific image that I didn’t need to see. It was burned into my memory: Cade bound in the van, blindfolded, her face bloody and bruised, that awful sign around her neck. Bruce took the phone, his face a mask of control as he studiedthe image. But I saw the slight tremor in his hand, the whitening of his knuckles. This wasn't just The Gavel looking at a victim; this was a grandfather seeing his beloved granddaughter in pain.
When he handed the phone back, his eyes were glacial.
"I'm going to find her," he said, with the quiet certainty of a man stating a natural law. "And then I'm going to find who did this." He swept his gaze across the room, lingering on each of us in turn. "Anyone who had a hand in hurting her, directly or indirectly, is going to answer to me." The threat hung in the air, encompassing all of us. Even Blake had the sense to look sober.
"What can we do?" I asked, meeting Bruce's eyes directly. "We've been searching for five weeks. My father's resources, the Trivium's connections, nothing has turned up a trace of her." Bruce studied me for a moment. “Your father?” he asked with a lilt of surprise in his tone. "Nicholas Bale. He’s involved?"
"He's been helping with the search," I confirmed. "He has contacts in places the rest of us can't reach."
“Why would that bastard care about my granddaughter?” I shook my head.
“The night she was taken, it was just after dinner with my father,” I let out a short laugh, although there was no humour in sight. “She impressed him.”
“Of course she did,” Bruce said, “My granddaughter is the best of the best.” I nodded my agreement.
“As soon as he knew, my father had the full force of the Bale family in search of Cadence.”
