Chapter 4 - THE WOMAN THEY BURIEDLydia had survived seven years by becoming someone else.
Different name.
Different city.
Different hair.
Different life.
But the Caldwells had found her.
Three weeks earlier, Julian had kidnapped her and hidden her beneath my building.
The reason was simple.
Lydia had discovered that the Caldwell fortune had been built on construction fraud.
Fourteen major properties were compromised.
Residential towers.
Hospitals.
Schools.
A courthouse.
A sports arena.
And a new skyscraper in San Francisco called the Halcyon Tower.
My stomach tightened.
I had been hired to review part of that building.
“They needed you,” Lydia said.
“For what?”
“Your professional credibility.”
She looked at me.
“And your condo.”
The evidence had once been hidden there.
Lydia had created a copying system.
Every document placed inside the hidden case was duplicated elsewhere.
But someone had taken the original case.
Then the hospital lights went out.
A man entered wearing surgical scrubs.
He carried a syringe.
Reyes tackled him.
His burner phone contained a single message:
DO NOT LET LYDIA NAME THE INVESTIGATOR.
Someone inside law enforcement was helping the Caldwells.
The empire wasn't just rich.
It was protected.
And then Lydia told me something I had never imagined.
“I had a daughter.”
“What happened to her?”
“They told me she died.”
Lydia's voice broke.
“But she didn't.”
She had received a photograph every year.
A little girl growing older.
A child the Caldwells kept as leverage.
Her name was Grace.
And Grace was Adrian's daughter.
My husband had a child.
May you like
He had allowed me to believe he was childless.
And the woman he had once loved had been forced to watch her daughter grow up without her.
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