Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN WHO CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD
The paramedics arrived within eight minutes.
Olivia was conscious but weak. They wrapped her in a blanket and checked her pulse while Daniel knelt beside the stretcher. Lily refused to release her mother's hand.
“I'm coming with you,” Daniel said.
“We need room to work,” a paramedic replied. “You can follow us.”
Daniel looked toward the ballroom doors. Vanessa was being held by two security officers. Marcus stood several feet away, speaking quietly into his phone.
“Don't let either of them leave,” Daniel ordered.
Marcus lowered his phone.
“Daniel, listen. This is a family emergency. You need to calm down.”
“My wife was tied up inside a wall at my wedding.”
“Your former wife,” Marcus corrected automatically.
Daniel turned.
“What did you say?”
Marcus's expression shifted. “I meant—we all believed she was dead.”
“Did you?”
Before Marcus could answer, Olivia reached for Daniel's wrist.
“Don't let him take the blue folder.”
“What blue folder?”
“Your father's records. The originals.”
Marcus gave a humorless laugh. “This is absurd. Olivia has been through a traumatic experience. She doesn't know what she's saying.”
Olivia's voice was faint but steady.
“He told me you had moved on. He said Lily didn't remember me anymore. He said you were planning to marry Vanessa and that if I came near you, I'd destroy your daughter's life.”
Daniel stared at Marcus.
“You told my daughter her mother was dead?”
“I was trying to protect her.”
“From her own mother?”
“From a woman who disappeared and left you both.”
Lily lifted her face.
“Uncle Marcus said Daddy didn't want to talk to Mommy. I heard him on the phone.”
Marcus closed his eyes briefly.
At the hospital, doctors found bruising around Olivia's wrists, a fractured rib, and signs of prolonged confinement. She had been held in a storage room beneath an empty property outside the city. She had escaped two nights earlier, but Vanessa's driver had found her near the wedding venue and brought her inside.
Olivia had hidden a small metal pin in her sleeve. She used it to loosen one wrist restraint, but she couldn't open the locked compartment.
Lily had seen her being taken through the service corridor. She recognized her mother's blue dress and spent the morning searching for her.
When Daniel finally sat beside Olivia's hospital bed, she looked at him with exhausted eyes.
“I'm sorry.”
“For what?”
“For not getting back sooner.”
Daniel lowered his head.
“You don't apologize for surviving.”
She reached for his hand.
“There's something you need to know. Vanessa didn't do this alone.”
“I know.”
“Marcus helped her. But he wasn't the person who planned it.”
Daniel's expression hardened.
“Who did?”
May you like
Olivia swallowed.
“Your father.”
