Chapter 4 - The Locked Door
Mrs. Herrera turned the color of wet ash. She grabbed the banister, her knees visibly buckling as she stared down the barrel of the weapon.
"Ethan, please," she stammered, dropping the polished, icy facade entirely. "Whatever this girl told you, she's lying. She's just a maid. She's trying to extort you!"
"She's the nurse who treated my daughter," Ethan corrected lethally, slowly ascending the first three steps. "And she is the reason you are going to tell me exactly who paid you to sign those transfer papers, and where my little girl is right now. If you lie to me, Evelyn, I will not call the police. I will handle you myself."
Mrs. Herrera sobbed, sinking to the steps in absolute, terrified defeat. "It was your brother-in-law. He wanted the trust fund. He paid the doctors. I don't know where she is, Ethan, I swear to God! He just told me to keep you medicated and isolated in this house!"
Ethan didn't yell. The terrifying calmness of his rage was worse. He pulled his phone from his pocket, dialing a number I knew didn't belong to the local police.
"Send the extraction team to my brother-in-law's estate," Ethan ordered into the phone. "Tear it down to the studs if you have to. Find her."
He ended the call, keeping the gun trained on the sobbing woman on the stairs, and turned his head slightly toward me.
He reached into his pocket and tossed a heavy, brass key onto the floor at my feet.
"The locked room at the end of the hall," Ethan said, his voice softening just a fraction as he looked at me. "It isn't a shrine, Elena. It's a medical suite. I built it three years ago, praying for a miracle I was told would never come."
My breath hitched.
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"You aren't a maid anymore," the most powerful man in Dallas vowed, the absolute authority in his voice sealing my fate. "You are going to take that key, and you are going to prepare that room for my daughter's return. And in exchange for giving me my life back today, I am moving your grandmother into the guest wing with round-the-clock private care. From this second forward, nobody in your family will ever suffer again."
I looked at the heavy brass key on the marble floor, picked it up, and finally smiled.
