CHAPTER 2 — THE SECRET BASEMENT
I barely slept.
Instead, I watched every second of security footage.
Hour after hour.
Day after day.
The videos revealed a nightmare.
Vanessa never hit Lily when I was home.
She waited until my flights departed.
She disconnected Wi-Fi before every attack, never realizing the cameras stored everything locally before uploading later.
She destroyed Lily's paintings.
Locked her in the basement for hours.
Starved her as punishment.
Repeated the same sentence over and over.
"No one will ever believe you."
I felt physically sick.
But then...
The footage showed something stranger.
Every Thursday afternoon...
A black SUV arrived.
The driver never entered through the front door.
He used the basement entrance.
I had forgotten the basement even had a second entrance.
The house originally belonged to my grandfather.
There were storage rooms beneath the wine cellar that no one had opened in decades.
Until Vanessa.
The next afternoon, while she attended a charity luncheon, I entered the basement myself.
Behind rows of dusty shelves stood a steel door.
It had never been there before.
Inside...
Rows of filing cabinets.
Professional scanners.
Computers.
Fake passports.
Birth certificates.
Corporate seals.
Hundreds of legal documents.
Entire identities.
Every one counterfeit.
Vanessa wasn't just abusing my daughter.
She was running a multimillion-dollar identity fraud operation beneath my own house.
Then I found the worst file.
"LILY HARRISON."
Inside was a contract.
If Lily were declared permanently mentally incompetent...
Control of the Harrison Family Trust would automatically transfer to her legal guardian.
My wife.
Value of the trust:
One hundred eighty-seven million dollars.
The room spun.
She had never married me for love.
She had married the father of the only heir.
And Lily...
Was simply the obstacle.
Then footsteps echoed upstairs.
Vanessa had come home early.
I switched off my flashlight.
Hidden between filing cabinets, I watched as she entered the secret room with the man from the SUV.
He smiled.
"When are we finishing the girl?"
Vanessa didn't hesitate.
"Tomorrow night."
My heart stopped.
"The paperwork is ready," she replied.
"After the institution signs the admission forms..."
"No one will ever see her again."
The man laughed.
"And Daniel?"
Vanessa smiled.
"He'll think depression took his daughter."
"He always believes what I tell him."
I quietly activated the emergency panic button hidden inside my watch.
Years ago, my company had installed them for executives traveling overseas.
Only four people knew the signal.
Within sixty seconds...
Federal investigators would know my exact location.
Vanessa had no idea the walls around her were already closing in.
She poured herself a glass of wine.
May you like
Completely unaware...
This was the last peaceful drink she would ever have.
