Chapter 3 - THE PERSON WHO CAME BACK FOR THE PAINTINGDominic found Chloe and Caleb locked inside the nursery bathroom.
Neither child was physically hurt.
That was the first thing that mattered.
The second was that somebody had been inside Ashford House while we were downstairs.
Caleb was crying too hard to speak.
Chloe wasn't.
She was terrifyingly calm.
“Someone came upstairs,” she told her father.
Dominic knelt in front of her.
“Did you see who?”
She nodded.
“A man.”
“What did he look like?”
“Tall. Gray coat. He told us there was a fire downstairs.”
Dominic went still.
“What happened then?”
“We said we'd go get you.”
“And?”
“He grabbed Caleb.”
Dominic's face changed.
His daughter continued.
“I hit him with the horse.”
She pointed toward a bronze sculpture lying in the hallway.
Despite everything, I nearly smiled.
“You hit him?”
“On the hand.”
Caleb sniffed.
“Really hard.”
“The man said a bad word,” Chloe added.
Dominic pulled both children against his chest.
I turned away.
I didn't belong in that moment.
Yet watching him hold them, I understood something about Dominic Ashford I hadn't seen before.
He wasn't just an impatient billionaire trying to clean up his family's art records.
He was a father.
And somebody had just used his children to get to a twenty-five-year-old secret.
Security footage from the estate should have shown exactly who entered.
It didn't.
The cameras had gone offline forty seconds before the power failure.
Professional.
Planned.
Dominic called the police.
Lucille objected.
“This can still be handled privately.”
Dominic stared at her as if she had spoken another language.
“A stranger just grabbed my son.”
“We don't know what happened.”
“We know exactly what happened.”
“Dominic—”
“No.”
The word ended the conversation.
Police arrived within fifteen minutes.
The missing painting complicated everything.
So did the insurance records.
So did the letters.
Dominic gave detectives the documents we'd already recovered.
Lucille looked furious.
Malcolm looked worse.
I sat in the library while a detective named Elena Torres took my statement.
When I told her who my mother was, she stopped writing.
“I know that case.”
“You were working twenty-five years ago?”
“No. But my captain was a young detective then. People remembered it because of the publicity.”
“Do you know whether the investigation file still exists?”
“Probably archived.”
“I want it reopened.”
Torres studied me.
“Ms. Bennett, tonight's burglary is one case. What happened to your mother may become another.”
“She was framed.”
“I understand that's what the documents appear to suggest.”
“Appear?”
She didn't react to my tone.
“Evidence has to survive scrutiny, especially when wealthy families and dead witnesses are involved.”
She was right.
I hated that she was right.
By midnight, the police had left with copies of everything.
Dominic moved his children to another wing of the house and doubled security.
I packed my laptop.
“I should go.”
He looked surprised.
“Why?”
“Because someone broke into your house looking for evidence connected to my family.”
“All the more reason you shouldn't leave alone.”
“I've been leaving alone for thirty-four years.”
“That isn't what I meant.”
“I know.”
For a moment we simply looked at each other.
There had always been tension between us.
Not romantic tension.
At least, that's what I'd told myself.
Dominic Ashford was frustratingly controlled, sometimes arrogant, absurdly observant, and difficult to impress.
I had built my career around detecting lies in provenance records.
He had built his around acquisitions and corporate restructuring.
We both distrusted vague answers.
It made working together exhausting.
Tonight, however, the usual sharp edges felt different.
He looked tired.
Human.
“Stay,” he said.
I glanced toward the dark windows.
“I don't think that's a good idea.”
“You're a target now.”
“I'm not sure I wasn't already.”
His expression tightened.
“What does that mean?”
I opened my phone.
“I received this three days ago.”
An anonymous email.
Four words.
Stop looking into Bellmere.
Dominic read it.
“Why didn't you show me?”
“Because I thought it was someone trying to scare me away from a valuable research lead.”
“Alyssa.”
“I get unpleasant emails. Every provenance researcher does.”
“This mentions Bellmere.”
“I didn't know Bellmere mattered three days ago.”
He handed the phone back.
“You're staying.”
I crossed my arms.
“That's not your decision.”
“No. But I'm asking.”
That was different.
I looked toward the upper floor where his children slept.
“Fine.”
He nodded.
“Guest room.”
“Not a prison cell?”
“Depends how much you criticize my cataloging system tomorrow.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
It surprised both of us.
An hour later, I lay awake in a guest suite bigger than my Boston apartment.
Sleep was impossible.
I called my mother.
She lived in Vermont now, in a small town where nobody cared about old Boston art scandals.
It was nearly one in the morning.
She answered on the third ring.
“Alyssa?”
“Mom.”
“What happened?”
Mothers always know.
I sat up.
“We found it.”
Silence.
“The Bell painting.”
More silence.
“Summer at Bellmere.”
I heard her inhale.
“Where?”
“Inside Ashford House.”
For several seconds, all I heard was breathing.
Then she said, “Come home.”
I frowned.
“What?”
“Leave that house.”
“Mom—”
“Tonight.”
“You knew it was there.”
“No.”
“You knew more than you told me.”
“Alyssa, listen to me. You need to leave.”
“Grandpa moved the painting.”
Her breathing stopped.
“There are letters.”
Nothing.
“Harrison Ashford ordered Grandpa to hide it.”
Still nothing.
“And when you saw him, Harrison blamed you.”
“Alyssa—”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because I wanted you to have a life that wasn't built around my mistakes.”
“They weren't your mistakes.”
“You don't understand.”
“Then explain.”
My mother's voice broke.
“Your grandfather wasn't the only person Harrison threatened.”
“Who else?”
She whispered my name.
Then the call disconnected.
I stared at the screen.
I called back.
No answer.
Again.
Nothing.
My stomach twisted.
I threw on my clothes and stepped into the hallway.
Dominic was already there.
Fully dressed.
Phone in his hand.
“What happened?”
“My mother isn't answering.”
“Do you think she's in danger?”
“I don't know.”
He didn't waste time asking more questions.
“I'm driving.”
We were downstairs within minutes.
Before we reached the front door, Lucille stepped from the shadows.
“Where are you going?”
“Vermont,” Dominic said.
Her face changed.
“No.”
I stopped.
“What?”
“You cannot bring Ruth here.”
“I wasn't planning to.”
Lucille looked directly at me.
“If she knows the painting has been found, she may do something foolish.”
“My mother isn't the person you should be worried about.”
“You don't know your mother as well as you think.”
I moved closer.
“You have exactly ten seconds to explain that sentence.”
Lucille's eyes filled with something I hadn't expected.
Pity.
Not for herself.
For me.
“Twenty-five years ago,” she said quietly, “Ruth didn't leave Ashford House empty-handed.”
My blood turned cold.
“What did she take?”
Lucille looked at Dominic.
Then back at me.
“A photograph.”
“Of what?”
“My father.”
“Doing what?”
Lucille swallowed.
“Standing beside a man who had supposedly been dead for six months.”
Dominic frowned.
“What man?”
Lucille answered with two words.
“Your father.”
Dominic stopped breathing.
His father, James Ashford, had died in a boating accident twenty-five years earlier.
May you like
His body had never been recovered.
And according to Lucille, my mother had proof he was alive.
Related Stories
