Chương 2
Afterward he had teased Claire that she could destroy a tank with a coat zipper.
Sofia had forgotten that until her thumb found the mark.
She pulled her hand away.
“Where did you get this?”
“Daniel’s office safe.”
“When?”
“Thursday.”
The wedding was Saturday.
Sofia stared at her.
“You’ve had it for two days?”
“Yes.”
“And you waited until I was standing at the altar?”
“No.”
A man’s voice came from the far end of the corridor.
“She didn’t.”
Daniel.
Sofia turned.
He had followed them out of the ballroom, though someone had removed the white rose from his lapel. Or maybe it had fallen off. His tuxedo looked suddenly like a costume he had rented for the wrong event.
Evelyn moved half a step between them.
Daniel noticed.
His mouth twitched bitterly.
“That’s new.”
“Stay where you are,” Evelyn said.
“I’m not going to hurt her.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“You’re standing like you think I might.”
“I’m standing where I want to stand.”
Sofia looked from one of them to the other.
“What happened Thursday?”
Neither answered quickly enough.
Sofia’s voice rose.
“What happened Thursday?”
Evelyn said, “Daniel asked me to retrieve documents from his office safe while he was in New York. We were closing a hotel acquisition Friday morning. He gave me the code.”
Daniel rubbed his forehead.
“I forgot those documents were in there.”
“What documents?”
“Insurance certificates. An original guaranty.”
“No. What else was in the safe?”
Daniel looked at the floor.
Sofia felt something inside her become still.
It was not calmness. It was what happened when fear grew too large to move.
“Daniel.”
He said, “The necklace.”
“And?”
“A flash drive.”
Evelyn’s eyes shifted toward him.
That was the first time Sofia saw her lose control, though only slightly.
“You told me there was nothing else related to Claire.”
Daniel said nothing.
Evelyn’s voice sharpened. “You told me that.”
“I panicked.”
“Where is the drive?”
“At my apartment.”
“Our apartment?” Sofia asked.
Daniel looked at her.
She almost laughed.
Their apartment.
The place where her wedding shoes had been lined up by the entryway yesterday because she was worried she would forget them. The place where Daniel kept oat milk even though he hated it because Sofia liked it in coffee. The place where they had argued about whether the blue chair in the living room was ugly. The place where they were supposed to return tomorrow night as husband and wife.
“What is on the drive?”
“I don’t know anymore.”
“You don’t know?”
“I haven’t opened it in years.”
Evelyn said, “That is not an answer.”
“It’s the truth.”
Sofia looked at Daniel.
“You knew Claire.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
He swallowed.
“She came to me because of my father.”
Margaret, who had been silent beside Sofia, made a faint sound.
Thomas Cross.
Daniel’s father had retired as chairman of Cross Meridian Holdings eight years ago. He was seventy-two, silver-haired, charming, and capable of making anyone feel that he remembered meeting them even when he obviously did not. He and Sofia had never been close, but he sent handwritten birthday cards and once drove forty minutes to bring her mother soup after surgery.
He was sitting in the ballroom right now.
Or had been.
Sofia stared at Daniel.
“What does your father have to do with Claire?”
“Everything.”
The service door swung open.
Thomas Cross entered.
He did not look shocked.
That was what Sofia noticed first.
He looked irritated.
“Sofia,” he said, “this is obviously a terrible situation, but it does not need to become a public spectacle.”
Evelyn laughed once.
It was not a pleasant sound.
Thomas looked at her.
“You’ve done enough.”
“No,” Evelyn said. “I don’t think I have.”
Daniel stepped toward his father.
“Go back inside.”
Thomas ignored him.
“Sofia, your guests are frightened, your mother is upset, and there are people in that room recording on their phones. You need to consider what happens next very carefully.”
Sofia looked at him.
He had called her guests frightened.
Not her.
Not Daniel.
The guests.
“What happened to my sister?”
Thomas’s expression barely moved.
“I have no idea.”
“Did you know her?”
“No.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
Thomas saw it.
The two men looked at each other.
And Sofia understood, before anyone spoke, that one of them had just made a mistake.
“Daniel?” she said.
He looked sick.
Thomas said, “Whatever my son thinks he remembers from years ago—”
“You said you didn’t know her.”
“I didn’t.”
“Then what would he remember?”
Thomas paused.
Only for a second.
But Evelyn saw it too.
“You should leave,” she said.
Thomas’s face hardened. “This is a family matter.”
“You forfeited the right to define the family matter when you started answering questions no one asked you.”
Daniel stepped forward.
“Dad. Leave.”
Thomas turned to him.
For the first time, something almost tender passed over his face.
“Do not make this worse.”
Daniel’s shoulders dropped.
Sofia had seen that movement before.
At dinners. In meetings. At Thanksgiving the previous year when Thomas corrected Daniel’s story about a childhood vacation and Daniel simply stopped talking.
She had always thought Daniel was bored by his father.
Now she recognized fear.
She reached behind her head and pulled the veil free.
Three hairpins came with it.
The veil dropped onto a catering cart.
Margaret whispered, “Sofia.”
“I’m fine.”
She wasn’t.
She stepped out of her shoes.
The ballroom service corridor was cold under her bare feet.
“I want my phone.”
Her mother opened a tiny beaded purse.
Sofia’s phone had seventeen missed calls, forty-one text messages, and a screen full of notifications she refused to read.
She called one person.
Detective Lena Ortiz had given the Bennett family her personal number three years earlier, when the police department reassigned Claire’s cold case to another unit and Margaret reacted so badly that Ortiz, who had been the original secondary detective, came to the house herself to explain.
Ortiz answered on the fourth ring.
May you like
“Sofia?”
Sofia heard traffic in the background.
