Nothing but the cold Pennsylvania quiet and the sound of my own breathing.
I exit the Aventador and approach the house. The front door is cracked open. I can't even explain the feeling in my gut right now. It's absolute dread bordering on the verge of panic.
I blow out a breath, then push it open and step into the foyer.
Motion sensors should be flooding the space with light.
Nothing.
I pull my phone, activate the flashlight, and sweep the beam across marble floors and antique furniture arranged like set pieces in a museum no one's visiting.
Everything looks untouched.
I move down the main hallway toward the back of the house, toward the door that leads to the basement. Halfway down the corridor my foot kicks something.
I stumble, catching myself against the wall with my free hand, phone jerking in the other. The beam sweeps wildly before I steady it and aim down.
The Little Princelies face-up on the floor.
The words to describe what I'm feeling right don't even exist.
I pick up the book and look down the hallway. My eyes land on the far end of the house—the library.
Why is this book on the floor?
I straighten, swinging the phone's beam in a wider arc.
Metal glints a few feet away.
A key.
But not justakey.
Thekey.
It rests against the baseboard like it skidded there and stopped. Small, and brass, and offering exactly what I promised—freedom whenever she wanted it.
She used the key. Came upstairs. Took the book.
My brain catalogues possibilities with the efficiency of a spreadsheet sorting data into columns labeled 'likely', 'possible', and 'you're fucked'.
She finally decided to leave. Took the money, the passport, the fresh start I gift-wrapped and left waiting. She waited until I was away at Sunday dinner and left quietly. No scene, no crying, no goodbyes… the freedom I told her she could claim any time.
The thought should bring relief—one less witness, one less liability, one less person I have to protect from Luca LaRiccia's inevitable questions about his missing degenerate son.
But that's not what happened here.
There is no relief because my phone light catches another glint of metal down the hall. Shoved against the wall is the case.
I walk over, pick it up, and then thumb the latches and click it open.
Sixty-three thousand dollars in banded stacks stare back at me.
The passport with Emmaleen's new name, photo, and a birth date that makes her two years younger.
The plane ticket to anywhere, date open, private and untraceable.
She didn't take the case.
