The cake is eleven feet of sugar and ivory, and it is already moving toward his mouth when Marisol Vega crosses the ballroom floor at a dead run. Two hundred guests are watching the knife.

The photograph had been taken less than ten minutes earlier.

Grant estimated that from the metadata, though he warned them the information could have been manipulated. Emilio was seated in a room with concrete walls and a single exposed bulb. His wrists were tied to the chair arms. A dark bruise had begun to form along his cheekbone.

He was alive.

That was the only fact Marisol could hold onto.

Adrienne arranged for the police to establish a secure command point at the estate. Detectives interviewed staff members separately. Every employee who had worked near the kitchen was asked to describe the morning's movements.

Celeste was questioned for nearly an hour.

She emerged pale but composed.

“I've told them everything,” she announced. “This is a nightmare.”

Adrienne stood at the far end of the corridor.

“Then you won't mind answering a few more questions.”

She looked at Marisol.

“Do you intend to keep me under suspicion forever?”

“I intend to find out who took Emilio.”

Celeste's expression softened into something resembling sympathy.

“I understand that you're upset. But perhaps your brother's disappearance has nothing to do with this. Young men get into trouble. Perhaps he owes someone money.”

Marisol took a step toward her.

“Don't you dare.”

A detective intervened before the confrontation could escalate.

Celeste turned away, but not before Marisol noticed the small movement of her right hand. She was touching the inside of her wrist, where a delicate gold bracelet rested against her skin.

The same bracelet she had worn in the kitchen.

Marisol remembered something else.

When Victor had placed the vial in Celeste's palm, his thumb had brushed the bracelet. A small metal charm had swung from it, shaped like a key.

Now the charm was gone.

Marisol waited until Celeste left before speaking to Adrienne.

“Her bracelet had a key charm this morning.”

He looked at her.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I noticed it because it struck the edge of the vial.”

“Did you see her wearing it afterward?”

Marisol shook her head.

“No.”

Adrienne asked Grant to review the security footage from the bridal suite corridor. The camera had been disabled during the earlier blackout, but a second camera near the staircase had captured Celeste entering the room with the bracelet and leaving without it.

A search of the suite produced nothing.

Someone had removed the charm.

“Could it be the key to a lock?” Marisol asked.

“Possibly,” Grant said. “Or it could be decorative.”

Adrienne looked at the photograph of Emilio again.

“We don't have time to guess.”

A detective brought them the results of a preliminary background check on Victor Sloane. He had worked for a pharmaceutical laboratory before being dismissed for falsifying records. Several civil cases had followed him. He had later become a consultant for private security firms and offshore holding companies.

One of those companies had paid for the black SUV used to abduct Emilio.

Another had transferred money to an account linked to Celeste's personal financial adviser.

The detective did not call the connection proof.

But it was enough to change the direction of the investigation.

“Can you trace the payments?” Adrienne asked.

“Some of them. The funds passed through several shell companies.”

“Who owns the first account?”

The detective turned a page.

“That's the problem. The account is registered to a trust established by your late father.”

Adrienne's face changed.

“My father died twelve years ago.”

“The trust was created before his death and remained active afterward.”

“Who administers it?”

The detective looked at him.

“Your older brother, Nathan Hawthorne.”

For several seconds, Adrienne did not move.

“Nathan has been dead for eight years.”

“His death certificate says he died in a boating accident. But someone has been using the trust.”

Marisol watched the shock move across Adrienne's face.

He had spoken about his family only once or twice in the five years she had worked at the estate. Nathan had been older, charming, and reckless. He had left the family business after a bitter argument with their father, then supposedly died during a private sailing trip off the coast of Maine.

Adrienne had identified the body.

Or believed he had.

“That's impossible,” he said.

The detective closed the folder.

“Then someone is using a dead man's identity.”

A new message arrived on Marisol's phone.

No photograph this time.

Only a line of text.

ASK ADRIENNE WHAT HAPPENED THE NIGHT HIS BROTHER DIED.

Marisol looked up.

Adrienne had read it over her shoulder.

The color drained from his face.