Chapter 5 - THE SIGNATURE
The police converted Nathan’s library into a temporary interview room.
Guests were questioned one by one.
Olivia was not arrested immediately.
The evidence showed manipulation, but Jonah still needed proof connecting her to Grace’s imprisonment.
Aaron refused to speak without an attorney.
Charles remained inside the mansion under police supervision.
Grace sat beside Lily on a leather couch.
Nathan stood near the fireplace.
For the first time in six years, the three of them were alone.
Lily had stopped crying.
She kept one hand wrapped around Grace’s fingers.
With her other hand, she held Nathan’s sleeve.
The sight broke something inside Grace.
This was the family they should have been.
Nathan lowered himself into the chair opposite them.
“I didn’t know you were alive.”
Grace studied his face.
“I want to believe that.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Did you sign my commitment papers?”
Nathan looked toward the floor.
“Yes.”
Lily tightened her grip on Grace’s hand.
Nathan noticed.
“I thought your mother was sick, sweetheart.”
Grace’s voice became sharp.
“Don’t explain it to her before you explain it to me.”
Nathan swallowed.
“The videos terrified me.”
“You could have visited.”
“Dr. Mercer told me contact made you violent.”
“You could have called another doctor.”
“I did.”
Grace waited.
“The doctor reviewed Mercer’s reports and agreed with him.”
“Which doctor?”
Nathan hesitated.
“Dr. Samuel Bennett.”
Grace stared at him.
Samuel Bennett was her uncle.
He was Charles’s younger brother.
He had died three years earlier in a boating accident.
Grace remembered him as a gentle man who brought candy to family dinners.
Now she wondered whether anything in her childhood had been real.
Nathan moved closer.
“After the clinic fire, they gave me your wedding ring.”
He removed a chain from beneath his shirt.
Grace’s wedding ring hung from it.
“I never stopped wearing it.”
Grace felt tears burning behind her eyes.
Then she remembered Olivia standing beside him in a wedding gown.
“You were about to marry my sister.”
Nathan closed his hand around the ring.
“Lily needed stability.”
“You needed someone to replace me.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“Neither were six years inside a locked room.”
Nathan looked away.
Grace hated that part of her still remembered the man he had been.
She remembered dancing with him in their first apartment.
She remembered him sleeping beside Lily’s crib when the baby had a fever.
She remembered believing his arms were the safest place in the world.
Lily leaned against her.
“Aunt Olivia said Daddy chose her because you didn’t love us.”
Nathan’s head snapped up.
“I never said that.”
“She said you burned Mommy’s letters.”
Grace stared at him.
“What letters?”
Nathan appeared confused.
“I never received any letters.”
Grace had written hundreds.
She wrote on napkins, medical forms, and pieces of paper stolen from the nurses’ station.
Every letter was addressed to Nathan.
Every letter begged him to come.
Nurse Camila Ruiz had promised to deliver several of them.
Grace suddenly remembered Camila’s final warning before helping her escape.
Trust the woman who kept the first letter.
Grace reached into her purse and removed a folded photograph.
It showed a storage locker near Union Station.
A number was written on the back.
Nathan looked at it.
“What is that?”
“The place where the truth has been waiting.”
Before Grace could explain, Jonah entered the room.
His expression was grim.
“Aaron Pike is dead.”
Nathan stood.
“How?”
“Poison hidden inside a dental crown.”
Grace felt cold.
Jonah looked at her.
“He knew someone would eventually catch him.”
“Did he say anything?”
“He left three words written on the interview table.”
Jonah showed them a photograph.
The message read, ASK NATHAN WHY.
May you like
Grace slowly looked at her husband.
Nathan’s face had gone pale.
