Taken Away Again
Chapter 12 - Taken Away Again
The recipe ledgers gave prosecutors a financial case, but they did not prove murder.
Vincent moved quickly.
He filed for emergency guardianship of Mason as the boy’s biological uncle, arguing Elias’s criminal exposure and emotional instability made the chef unfit. Vincent owned the company, the house where Elias lived, and the trust paying the legal bills.
The court ordered Mason placed in a temporary foster home until a full hearing.
Mason stood in the courthouse hallway with his belongings packed into Ruth’s old backpack.
“This keeps happening,” he said. “People decide where I belong while I’m standing right there.”
Elias looked helpless.
“I will fix it.”
“Ruth said that. Nora said that. Everybody leaves and calls it protection.”
Mason walked away with the social worker before Elias could answer.
The foster home was safe and kind, which made Mason feel guilty for hating it. A framed sign in the kitchen read FAMILY IS WHERE LOVE LIVES. He wanted to throw it through a window.
That night, he discovered a note sewn inside the lining of Ruth’s backpack.
The handwriting belonged to Ruth.
Mason,
If they take you again, remember the pantry door at Bellamy House. Claire chose places people ignored. Rich men look at vaults. Mothers look at cupboards.
Mason called Detective Brooks.
The next morning, they searched the old pantry beside the Bellamy pastry kitchen. Behind a shelf of unused copper molds was a narrow door painted the same color as the wall.
It opened into a hidden service passage.
At the end stood a small room containing a cot, bottled water, and children’s clothing from thirteen years earlier.
Claire had prepared a hiding place for herself and Luca.
On the floor lay a charred section of blue wool fabric.
Elias recognized Vincent’s coat from the night of the fire.
Dana also found a bloodstain preserved beneath a metal cabinet. Testing identified the blood as Claire’s.
She had escaped the apartment alive and reached Bellamy House.
Someone followed her there.
Security archives from that year had supposedly been erased, but one backup reel remained in a retired banquet system. The footage showed Claire entering through the alley at 3:02 a.m.
At 3:11, Vincent arrived.
At 3:24, Vincent left carrying Claire’s recipe books.
At 3:31, an ambulance owned by Saint Catherine’s private clinic removed an unconscious woman from the building.
Claire had not died in the apartment.
The body buried under her name belonged to someone else.
Mason looked at Elias.
“If I survived, maybe she did too.”
Elias wanted to believe it.
Dana checked clinic records. A female patient matching Claire’s age was transferred that morning to a long-term care facility under the name Catherine Bell.
May you like
The facility still existed.
Catherine Bell was alive.
