All Chapters of The scent of her revenge : Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

Brandt said the last word twice.“Missing,” Elara repeated. “Or refusing to answer his phone?”“His solicitor hasn't seen him since the photograph changed hands. He was supposed to meet her at noon. He never arrived.”“Julian has disappeared before,” Rhys said.“Which is why I'm not calling this an abduction,” Brandt replied. “But his car was found running near the river.”Elara felt the remembered weight of Julian's gun in the cellar. She had spent three years learning his expressions, and yet she still could not tell whether his fear on the telephone had been genuine.“Was there blood?”“None reported. We're examining the vehicle.”“Then we don't know what happened.”“Correct.”She wanted to ask whether Brandt would search for Julian with the same urgency he would give an innocent man. But Julian had left a trail of victims, including Brandt's daughter. She could not demand that the detective feel what she felt. Only that he do his job.Brandt seemed to read her expression.“We will

“Gabriel,” Rhys repeated.Brandt turned his phone facedown. “The filename is a lead, not proof. Someone named the recording. We don't know who, or when the conversation happened.”“But Conrad said my father brought the boy.” Rhys looked toward the window. “He brought Gabriel to a man who was already hurting him.”Elara remembered the broken wooden horse and Sylvie's tired hands.“Then we should ask Gabriel's mother what happened before Marcus disappeared.”Sylvie listened to the recording in the guarded ward without interrupting. When Conrad's voice ended, she shut her eyes.“I told Marcus not to take Gabriel,” she said.Rhys gripped the back of a chair. “When?”“October 2004. A few days before the boat.” Her voice cracked. “Marcus came to my apartment and asked for one afternoon. He said he had finally found a way to make the doctors answer for what they'd done.”“Did you agree?” Elara asked.“I refused. Gabriel heard us arguing.” Sylvie twisted the edge of her blanket. “He went to t

Gabriel's words seemed to empty the room of air.Elara heard the hospital trolley rattling beyond the door, the distant chime of a lift. Ordinary noises. Nothing in them belonged beside her mother's name.“Rhys was at the atelier?” she asked.Gabriel shook his head. “Vale said he remembered it. I don't know whether he was there.”“Those aren't the same thing,” Brandt said.“No.” Gabriel rubbed his palms against his trousers. “I was eight. I wrote down what the adults said because I thought someone would make me forget.”“Where's the notebook?” Rhys asked.“In my bag. I didn't bring it through security.”Brandt rose. “I'll have an officer collect it with you. We'll document the handover.”Gabriel stood, then faltered. “My mother doesn't know what's in it.”“She can decide whether she wants to hear it,” Elara said.He looked at her with startled gratitude.The notebook was smaller than Elara expected.Its cover showed a cartoon sailboat, faded almost white. Gabriel laid it on the consul

The confession was only four lines long.Elara read them again while Rhys sat motionless beside her.I locked the courtyard door. Lucille asked me to. Because the person we feared most was already inside with Elara Quinn.“There's a page missing,” she said.Priya checked the scan. “That's all the envelope contained.”“Then Marcus left us a reason without telling us what happened.”Rhys stared at his father's handwriting. “He locked a door while my wife was trapped behind it.”Elara turned to him.“You didn't know me then.”“That doesn't make it easier.”“No,” she said. “It doesn't.”Brandt entered before either could speak again. He carried the fire report.“I've asked our document examiner to compare the handwriting,” he said. “Until then, this is an account attributed to Marcus, not a finding.”“What does 'the person we feared most' mean?” Rhys asked.“I was hoping one of you could tell me.”Elara bent over the floor plan.“The courtyard door opened outward,” she said. “If someone w

Elara read her mother's note three times before she trusted herself to speak.“The room beneath the greenhouse,” she repeated.Rhys knelt beside her. “There is no room beneath the greenhouse.”“You're certain?”“I played there as a boy. My grandfather kept orchids under glass. The floor is stone.”“Stone can cover a staircase.”Brandt's officer sealed the note in an evidence sleeve. “No one is taking the keys anywhere until they're photographed and logged.”Elara withdrew her hand from the cedar chest.“I wasn't going to steal them.”“I didn't say you were, madame.”But she had been imagining the brass turning in a lock, the first breath from a room Lucille had wanted her to find.She bent over the open chest once more. Beneath the scorched spoon lay a strip of dried green ribbon. She lifted it with her eyes, not her hands, and remembered her mother tying the same shade around sample bottles. Green had meant a formula wasn't finished. Not ready to be worn. Not ready to be sold.Perhap