Nathan removed a small silver bracelet from his coat.
Margaret recognized it instantly.
Emily wore it the night she disappeared.
She rushed toward him.
“Where did you get that?”
“Jonathan gave it to me.”
Alexander’s calm expression finally broke.
“My father knew where Emily was?”
“The affair, the stolen shares, and this wedding were distractions.”
“Distractions from what?”
Nathan glanced toward a locked service corridor beside the ballroom.
“From the woman being held beneath this hotel.”
Margaret’s knees weakened.
Nathan placed the bracelet in her hand.
“Your daughter is alive.”
A scream echoed from somewhere below the ballroom.
Alexander turned toward the sound.
Nathan smiled faintly.
“But she is not the little girl you remember.”
Agents forced open the corridor.
A narrow stone staircase led into darkness.
The Grand Hawthorne had been built over an old private hospital owned by Margaret’s family.
Most of the lower levels had supposedly been sealed during renovations.
Alexander, Margaret, James, and several agents descended.
At the bottom stood a reinforced steel door.
Another scream came from behind it.
Agents broke the lock.
Inside was a small medical room illuminated by fluorescent lights.
A woman sat strapped to a chair.
She was pale and painfully thin.
An IV ran into her arm.
Her dark hair had been cut unevenly near her shoulders.
But Margaret recognized her eyes.
“Emily?”
The woman slowly lifted her head.
“Mom?”
Margaret collapsed beside her.
Alexander cut the restraints while agents searched the room.
Photographs covered one wall.
Emily at six.
Nine.
Fourteen.
Twenty.
Every birthday their family believed she was dead.
Vanessa had followed them downstairs.
She stared at the photographs in horror.
“Who kept her here?”
Emily raised a trembling hand and pointed toward Nathan.
“He did.”
Margaret turned.
Nathan did not deny it.
“I kept her hidden because Jonathan ordered her death.”
“That’s a lie,” Alexander said.
Nathan opened the incomplete confession.
It stated that Jonathan used Emily’s disappearance to frame Nathan for financial theft and seize complete control of Whitmore Holdings.