Chapter 5 - THE WOMAN IN THE EMERALD DRESS
Isabel was brought to the estate's small conference room the following afternoon. She had changed out of her emerald gown and wore a cream cashmere suit. Her hair was immaculate. She looked like a woman arriving for a business meeting, not someone whose actions had left a three-year-old in a cellar overnight.
Detective Ruiz sat across from her. Lucian stood near the window, arms folded. Martin remained by the door.
Isabel smiled when she saw Lucian.
“Darling.”
“Don't call me that.”
Her smile faltered.
Ruiz began with basic questions: when Isabel had arrived, whether she had been alone with Rosie, whether she had entered the salon, and whether she had touched the cellar hatch.
Isabel denied locking the child inside.
“I found Rosie near the cellar door. She was playing. I told her to go upstairs.”
“Did you fasten the exterior bolt?” Ruiz asked.
“No.”
“Did you have a key?”
“I have keys to several rooms.”
“Was the brass key found at the hatch yours?”
Isabel folded her hands.
“I can't say. There are dozens of keys in this house.”
Lucian placed the evidence photograph on the table.
“It's the key you wore around your neck.”
She glanced at it.
“I must have dropped it.”
“When?”
“I don't remember.”
Ruiz continued. “Why did you tell guests the child was always in the way?”
Isabel's expression hardened.
“I was frustrated. That is not a crime.”
“No,” Ruiz said. “But confining a child and depriving her of food or water may be.”
Isabel looked at Lucian.
“Are you really going to let a detective speak to me like this?”
“You can answer her questions.”
“I was trying to help you. Rosie has been impossible since her mother died.”
Lucian's expression changed.
“Her mother is alive.”
Isabel blinked.
“I'm sorry?”
“You know exactly what I mean. You have spent six weeks telling my daughter that I don't love her. You told her she would be sent away after our wedding. You locked her in a cellar.”
“I did not.”
“Then explain the bolt.”
Isabel looked at the photograph.
“I wanted her to calm down.”
“By locking her under the floor?”
“She was screaming. The guests were arriving. I needed the house to be quiet.”
Ruiz wrote something down.
Lucian stepped closer.
“You could have called me.”
“You were busy.”
“I was in the house.”
“You were meeting people.”
“You could have interrupted.”
Isabel's eyes flashed.
“And what would you have done? Left your guests? Cancelled your reception? You always choose her.”
Lucian stared at her.
“She is three.”
“She controls you.”
“She is my daughter.”
“And I was supposed to become your wife.”
“You were supposed to love her.”
For a moment, Isabel's face revealed something raw and ugly.
“I tried.”
“No. You wanted her out of the way.”
Isabel stood abruptly.
“This is ridiculous. You are allowing a maid to destroy our future.”
Ruiz raised a hand.
“Sit down.”
Isabel remained standing.
Lucian spoke softly.
“Sit.”
She sat.
Ruiz placed another document on the table. It was a printed email exchange between Isabel and a child-placement consultant. The messages discussed a temporary residential program for children whose parents traveled frequently or had “complex household arrangements.”
Lucian read the first page.
“What is this?”
Isabel said nothing.
Ruiz explained. “The consultant was contacted under a false name. The inquiry asked whether a child could be placed in a residential program without the other parent being notified.”
Lucian looked at Isabel.
“You planned to send Rosie away.”
“It was only an inquiry.”
“Who made it?”
She hesitated.
“Me.”
“Why?”
“Because you never had time for her. You left everything to staff. I thought she needed structure.”
“You thought she needed to disappear.”
“That is not what I said.”
Ruiz slid another page forward.
A bank transfer. A payment to Northbridge Facilities, the same company connected to the camera outage.
Isabel's face changed.
“That's not mine.”
“The account belongs to a company controlled by your father,” Ruiz said. “The payment was made two days before the reception.”
Isabel looked at Lucian.
“My father has nothing to do with this.”
“Then why did his company pay the contractor who disabled the cameras?”
“I don't know.”
Lucian looked at the email again.
“Did you plan to put Rosie in that program after the wedding?”
Isabel's eyes filled, but there was no softness in them.
“I wanted us to have a life together.”
“A life without my daughter.”
“A life where you weren't constantly pulled away.”
Lucian stood very still.
Then he removed the engagement ring from the small pocket inside his jacket and placed it on the table.
“We're finished.”
Isabel stared at the ring.
“You can't end this because of one mistake.”
“One mistake?”
“I was under pressure.”
“You locked a three-year-old in a cellar.”
“I thought she'd be there for an hour.”
“She was there all day.”
“I didn't know—”
“You knew enough.”
Ruiz asked Isabel to remain seated while officers prepared the next steps. She looked at Lucian as if expecting him to change his mind.
He did not.
As she was escorted out, she turned toward him.
“You'll regret choosing that girl over me.”
Lucian's voice was quiet.
“I chose my daughter. You made the rest easy.”
After she was gone, Martin closed the door.
Lucian remained by the table, staring at the ring.
He had thought he was building a future.
Instead, he had nearly invited a person into his home who viewed his daughter as an obstacle.
Before Isabel was questioned, Martin found an envelope addressed to her in the household office. It contained a printed list of the Christmas guests, a seating chart, and a note reminding her that the announcement of the engagement would take place at 11:30 p.m.
Beneath it was a second note, written in a different hand.
The child must not interrupt. Make sure she is out of sight before the announcement.
Lucian read the sentence twice.
“Who wrote this?”
Martin shook his head. “The paper came from the Cross family office. The handwriting may be Richard Cross's assistant, but we need confirmation.”
Ruiz photographed both notes and added them to the evidence file.
The interview with Isabel began shortly afterward. She insisted she had only wanted Rosie away from the reception because the child was tired. When Ruiz asked why she had not taken her upstairs, Isabel said Rosie had refused to go.
“Then why did you lock the hatch?” the detective asked.
“I didn't.”
“Your key was found beside the bolt.”
“Anyone could have taken it.”
“Your handwriting appears on a note found in the cellar.”
Isabel's eyes flicked toward Lucian.
“You're letting a housemaid turn you against me.”
Lucian answered evenly. “The evidence is turning me against you.”
Isabel's composure cracked. She accused Faye of wanting Lucian's attention and suggested that the maid had staged the discovery. Ruiz asked whether Isabel had any evidence for the accusation. She had none.
“Then we will return to the facts,” Ruiz said. “Did you tell Rosie that her father did not love her?”
Isabel stared at the table.
“I may have said he was too busy.”
“Did you tell her she would be sent away after the wedding?”
“I told her things would change.”
“Did you tell her to remain quiet in the cellar?”
Isabel's silence lasted several seconds.
“I wanted her to stop crying.”
Lucian took a breath.
“How long did you intend to leave her there?”
“Until the announcement was finished.”
“That was hours away.”
“I thought someone would check.”
“Who?”
Isabel did not answer.
Ruiz ended the interview and explained that the matter would be referred to the prosecutor. Isabel was not free to return to the house or contact Rosie. She was escorted from the estate while officers collected her phone and other relevant records under the proper legal process.
At the doorway, she turned toward Lucian.
“You're throwing away everything we planned.”
Lucian looked at the ring on the table.
“No. I'm refusing to build a future on what you did to my daughter.”
After she left, Martin asked whether Lucian wanted the engagement announcement cancelled publicly.
“There will be no announcement,” Lucian said. “There will be a statement that the engagement is over and that Rosie is safe. Nothing more.”
“People will ask questions.”
“They can ask. My daughter is not a story for them to consume.”
For the first time since the reception began, Lucian felt the decision was simple. It did not make the consequences simple, but he no longer confused the two.
That night, Lucian sat alone in his study and reviewed the messages Martin had recovered from the household office. Most were ordinary: catering changes, flower deliveries, seating arrangements. But several showed a pattern. Isabel had asked the nanny to leave early, requested that the salon rug be moved, and instructed the kitchen not to send snacks to the upstairs playroom.
None of those requests looked criminal in isolation. Together, they described a day in which Rosie had been gradually removed from every place where another adult might notice her absence.
Lucian called Mrs. Bell once more. He apologized for not checking the story Isabel had given her. The nanny began to cry.
“I should have stayed,” she said.
“You were told to leave by someone you believed had authority.”
“I knew Rosie was upset.”
“Next time, if a child is frightened, you call me. You don't need permission.”
There would be no next time with Isabel, but the instruction mattered. Lucian asked Martin to revise the household protocol so that no employee could be dismissed from a child's care by a partner or guest.
When he finally went upstairs, Rosie was awake. She had placed her rabbit beside the empty pillow where Faye usually sat.
“Is Auntie gone?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Forever?”
“She won't be coming back to this house.”
Rosie looked at the ceiling. “Did she go to her house?”
“I expect so.”
“Is she still cross?”
Lucian sat beside her. “I don't know. But her feelings are not your responsibility.”
Rosie nodded slowly, as if filing the sentence away for later.
“Can I have my story?”
He reached for the book on the bedside table. It was the same one Faye had read the night before, about a fox who got lost in a snowy forest and followed the stars home.
May you like
Lucian read every page. When he reached the end, Rosie was asleep.
He stayed beside her long after the lamp had been switched off, listening to the steady rhythm of her breathing and understanding that protecting her would require more than one dramatic decision. It would require hundreds of small ones, made every day.
