Chapter 8 - Grace’s GraveI dropped the phone.
It hit the floor faceup, the photograph still glowing.
Grace Brooks.
Beloved daughter.
Seventeen hours of life.
An eternity of love.
Fresh dirt had been scattered across the small grave like someone had clawed at it with bare hands.
The room spun.
Lucas was still latched. Still drinking. Still alive. I forced my arms not to jerk, forced my breath not to break hard enough to startle him.
Adrian saw the screen.
His face changed before he picked it up.
“Hannah,” he said.
I could not answer.
My daughter’s grave.
My baby’s grave.
Three weeks after I buried her, someone had stood over her little body and taken a photograph to use against me.
Adrian looked at Monroe, who had entered at the sound of the phone hitting the floor.
The detective took one glance and went still.
“Trace it,” Adrian said.
Monroe lifted the phone carefully. “We’ll try.”
I stared at Lucas’s cheek moving as he nursed.
A terrible thought entered me.
If Isabel’s coffin had been opened…
“No,” I whispered.
Adrian crouched beside me. “Hannah.”
“No.”
He did not ask what I meant.
He understood.
Maybe because grief has only so many nightmares and we all share them eventually.
He turned to Monroe. “Send officers to the cemetery.”
“I’ll call local police.”
“Send my people too.”
Monroe’s eyes hardened. “Your people do not contaminate a crime scene.”
“My people stand outside the gates and make sure no one else gets near her.”
The detective held his gaze.
Then nodded once.
I wanted to go.
Every cell in me wanted to tear Lucas from my breast, run to a car, and reach Grace before whoever had violated her could do worse.
But Lucas’s little hand opened against my skin.
He was warm.
Alive.
Needing me.
The cruelty of it was almost perfect.
Whoever sent the photo had chosen a weapon sharper than poison. They had split me in two: dead child behind me, living child in my arms.
Adrian saw that too.
“You stay with Lucas,” he said softly.
A laugh escaped me, broken and ugly. “Do I get a choice?”
“Yes.”
That made me look at him.
His eyes were red, but steady.
“You always get a choice with me.”
I wanted to hate him for saying the right thing. It would have been easier if he were arrogant, cold, the billionaire who assumed money bought obedience. But Adrian kept becoming human at the worst possible moments.
“I need to know,” I whispered. “I need to know if she’s still—”
“She will be protected,” he said. “I swear it.”
“Don’t swear. People in this house swear too much.”
His mouth tightened with pain.
“I’ll prove it, then.”
Lucas finished feeding and fell asleep, milk-drunk and fragile. Dr. Porter checked him again, satisfied for the moment. Only then did I stand.
“I’m going to the cemetery.”
Adrian stepped closer. “Hannah—”
“I fed him. He’s stable. You said I get a choice.”
He closed his eyes for one second.
Then turned to Reeves. “Prepare the car.”
Monroe objected. “Absolutely not. We have an active threat, a contaminated scene, a missing accomplice, and a suspect in custody.”
I looked at him. “Detective, my daughter is in the ground.”
His face softened.
Just a fraction.
“Ten minutes,” he said. “You stay behind the line. You touch nothing.”
I nodded.
Adrian said, “I’m coming.”
“No,” I said.
He looked startled.
“You stay with Lucas.”
“Hannah—”
“Someone is trying to pull us apart from what matters. Don’t let them.”
He stared at me.
Then slowly nodded.
Mason, the guard who had eaten crackers for breakfast, went with me. So did Detective Monroe and two police cars. We drove through rain-slick roads, past iron gates and manicured hedges, into the ordinary world where people bought coffee and walked dogs and had no idea that my dead daughter had become evidence in a war between monsters.
The cemetery was small, tucked behind a white church in Queens. Not fancy. Not old money. Just rows of stones, wet grass, and the kind of silence that feels earned.
When the car stopped, I could not move.
Mason opened my door and stood there in the rain.
“Ma’am.”
I stared at the tiny section near the young maple tree.
The white marker.
The police tape.
The disturbed earth.
Something inside me folded.
I stepped out.
Rain soaked my hair instantly. Monroe took my elbow, not forcefully, just enough to keep me steady. We walked across the grass. My shoes sank into mud.
Grace’s grave was not open.
The dirt had been disturbed at the surface, scraped and scattered, but the casket had not been reached. A forensic technician looked up as we approached.
Monroe asked, “Well?”
“Surface disruption only. Looks staged for the photo.”
I made a sound that might have been a sob.
Not okay.
Nothing was okay.
But my baby had not been taken.
I sank to my knees in the wet grass behind the police line.
“Hi, Gracie,” I whispered.
The rain covered my tears.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Mason stood behind me like a wall.
Monroe stepped away to take a call.
I pressed my hand to my mouth, trying to keep the grief quiet. But grief does not care who hears. It rose out of me in a low broken sound I had not made since the hospital.
For three weeks, I had been surviving by moving. Baking. Feeding Lucas. Answering questions. Being useful.
At Grace’s grave, usefulness ended.
I was only her mother.
And she was still gone.
After a while, Mason crouched beside me. He was so large the umbrella looked ridiculous in his hand.
“My sister lost a baby,” he said quietly.
I turned, surprised.
He looked straight ahead. “Stillborn. Seven years ago. She didn’t want anybody to say the baby’s name because she thought she’d break. Then she got mad because nobody said the baby’s name.”
My throat tightened.
“What was the name?”
“Ella.”
Rain tapped the umbrella.
I looked back at the grave.
“Grace,” I said.
Mason nodded. “Grace.”
It helped.
Not enough.
But some.
Monroe returned, expression grim.
“They traced the text.”
“Where?”
“A burner routed through multiple relays. But the photo metadata wasn’t fully stripped.”
I wiped my face.
“It was taken here?”
“Yes. Thirty-six minutes before it was sent.”
My stomach turned.
“Who?”
He looked toward the cemetery gate.
“We pulled church security. Waiting on clearer images, but one vehicle showed up.”
He handed me his phone.
A still image appeared: a black sedan near the curb.
A woman exiting with an umbrella.
Not Marina.
Not Celeste.
Older.
Elegant.
Her face turned just enough toward the camera.
I knew her because I had seen her portrait in the Vale estate.
Adrian’s mother.
The dead woman who had supposedly been cremated.
I stared at the screen.
“That’s impossible.”
Monroe’s voice was quiet.
“In this case, Ms. Brooks, impossible seems to be a family habit.”
My phone rang again.
This time Adrian’s name appeared.
I answered with shaking fingers.
“Adrian?”
His breathing was harsh.
“Hannah, listen carefully. Do not come back to the estate.”
My blood chilled.
“What happened?”
“Lucas is safe. But Marina talked.”
A pause.
Then he said, “My mother is alive.”
I looked at the image on Monroe’s phone.
“I know.”
May you like
Adrian went silent.
Then he whispered, “She’s here.”
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